As Dreams Go By
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: Postfinale. Jack and Kate are in for a shock when the Others give them a task involving two small children. Who are these children? Do the Others have more to answer for than they think? Jack/Kate
1. Split Up

Hey, this is another new story I started writing. It's set at the end of Live Together, Die Alone. Everyone's been doing ones about jaby experiments, but I wanted to do it with a twist...so here it is!

* * *

Kate awoke to the sound of dripping. She didn't know where it was coming from, but the way it pouded into her skull told her that she was so dizzy that it wouldn't have made a difference whether it was falling into her ear or a the other side of a room. Her head span as she moved slightly, trying to figure out where she was, and as her eyes met nothing but emptiness, she started to remember what had happened as far as she could remember.

They were looking for the Others. Who had gone...her, Hurley, Sawyer, Jack and Michael...Michael. Michael. Michael. His name thudded through her head as anger tried to streak through her veins, only to be prevented by the fatigue that blocked it. Michael was responsible for all this - whatever this was. The Others had attacked them, and for the first time she was aware of a stinging pain in the back of her neck where that dart had hit her. It had hurt her, but not knocked her out, because she had been aware of Jack reacting to it, lifting her over his shoulders and desperately trying to get her out of there. Then he had fallen, and the darkness had set in.

After that...what had happened? There was a dock...a port...Michael and Walt disappearing over the waves in that pathetic little boat that would probably capsize at the first rocky wave...her and the other men lined up, gagged and tied whilst held at gunpoint...they had let Hurley go. Where was he now? Was he back at camp? Could he even find the way? They hadn't even known where they were in comparison to their camp and the hatch. She didn't even know how long she had been knocked out for. It could have been minutes or days.

She lifted her head one final time, fighting the nausea that set in at any movement. Her head churned until she felt phsyically sick, and for a minute, she thought that she might throw up on the floor, until she acknowledged the strip of fabric still gagging her. She tried to think on something else other than the sick feeling, not wanting to release the contents of her stomach until there was no chance of something blocking its way out.

She was in a room, a pathetic mud-filled hut that proved Michael hadn't lied completely. They did seem to be worse off than the survivors back at the camp. She couldn't see a way out of the room, and realised that she was tied to a chair in the centre of the room, and probably had her back to the door. She tried turning her head, but because of the pain in her neck caused by the dart she couldn't turn it far enough to catch a good sight of the door. All she could see was that it was metal, and that confused her. She was sitting in a man-made wooden hut that looked more like an old cabin from the craftmanship, and it had a metal sheet for a door.

Exhausted from the effort, her head fell onto her shoulder and her eyes closed for a moment, breathing as heavily as she could through the gag as her body begged for air. That was when she first noticed the punctures in her arm - needle marks. She couldn't remember being hit with a needle. Panick started to fill her.

Breathing through her nose, she ignored the smell of mould and something else that she couldn't identify, but resembled a rotting animal corpse. The nausea attacked her again, stronger this time, and she let out a pitiful moan that she knew no one would hear, and her last thoughts were of where Jack and Sawyer were as the darkness consumed her once again.

* * *

Sawyer had been held in a hut similar for about three hours before the Others came in, or rather, just two of them. Bea came in followed by Alex, and as his eyes fell upon the younger woman, he wondered who on Earth she reminded him of. She didn't really fit in with the others, because she always looked slightly uncomfortable in their presense.

"Hello, James." Bea said as she pulled a chair across from him, sitting down opposite him. He didn't reply. He just stared at her like he wanted nothing more than to rip her head off. "How are you feeling? I hope the dart had no lasting effects."

No lasting effects? His neck felt like it was still being stabbed by it. "Just peachy." He replied simply.

"Good. We'd hate for you to come to any harm during your stay with us."

Sawyer rolled his eyes. "You're kidding, right?"

"Excuse me?"

"You shot me with something that for all I know could be arsenic, and then you tie me to a chair in a shit-hole of a room - hell I've seen chickens in better houses than this. It sticks like dead animals, there's mud all over me...and you want me to think you're giving me the five star treatment?"

Bea looked directly into Sawyer's eyes, and that kind of creeped him out. "The darts were necessary."

"So is water. You got any? My mouth feels like its got mothballs." He asked.

"Food and water is a privalidge, James. As is your life."

Sawyer didn't retaliate that comment. His life wasn't a privilidge. His life was hell, and he didn't like her calling him James, talking to him like she knew him. "Where are they?" He asked.

"Your friends are alive."

"For all I know they might not be for much longer." Bea didn't respond, and he had to admit that unnerved him. Just because they were alive, it didn't mean that they hadn't been hurt. "If you touch one hair on her head I swear to God-"

"Katherine will not be harmed as long as you co-operate." Bea said. Sawyer scowled. He had no plans to co-operate at all, but Kate's life was on the line. He had to. Jack would probably kill him before the Others did if his actions were responsible for Kate's pain...and since when was her name Katherine? He started to realise just how little he knew her. "You will be taken to her shortly."

* * *

Jack couldn't remember when he'd woken up, he was just vaugely aware that he was suddenly staring at the ceiling. Unlike Kate and Sawyer, he hadn't been tied down, he was just lying on the floor. As soon as he got to his feet, his leg thumping where the dart had hit him, the door opposite him was opened, and Tom, formerly known as Zeke, entered with Bea, Alex, and Henry. He didn't know why he still thought of him as Henry, because that wasn't his name.

"Where is she?" He asked as soon as they entered. All he wanted to know was where Kate was. Sawyer could hold his own, he had no doubt about that, but Kate had a habit for getting herself into trouble, especially with these guys.

"You know, Jack," Henry said with a playful smile on his lips, the door closing behind them. "When you had me in the hatch, locked away behind that door, there was something that really amazed me, and that was the way you and Kate interacted with each other." Jack looked at him angrily, but knew better than to act on it.

"Where is she?"

"I never really saw the two of you together, but I heard you, and I'm not stupid, Jack. The way you talked about her to the other survivors, like you were trying not to fall for her." Jack glared at him. "But you already had." If looks could kill, Jack would be the last man standing in that room. "We were there, that day, when she kissed you."

"What?" He asked, his mind flashing back to that moment when Kate had pressed her lips against his, his lips tingling madly at the memory. He shook his head. "I don't believe you." They couldn't have been there.

Henry just smirked. "She was sitting down when you got there, wasn't she? You asked her what the hell she was doing out there."

Jack shook his head. "No..." Had they really been there? Surely this was something they could have guessed, right?

"She asked you if the redneck was okay, and you said that he was fine. Then she got up, and apologized. You don't like it when she apologizes, do you, Jack?"

No, he didn't. He hated it when she apologized. I'm sorry. Those two words that killed him every time, broke his heart into a thousand peices... "Shut up." He said bitterly.

"And then it all became romantic." Henry said sarcastically. "You told her that everything would be okay, that she wasn't really going crazy. And what did she do, Jack? She kissed you. And you liked it."

He had liked. More than anything. He wasn't sorry for it like she was. He had enjoyed it, savoured every second that their lips were connected. "Shut up." He repeated, louder this time.

"But she ran away."

"Shut up."

"She looked at you like she'd made a mistake."

"Just SHUT UP!" Jack screamed, and all was silent for a while before Henry started speaking again. If Jack hadn't been so scared for what they might do to her in return, he would have killed Henry with his bare hands before it had gotten this far.

"And then she tried so hard to get back into your good books, didn't she? But you didn't let her come on that hike to follow Michael. So she followed you, and who should find her, all alone in the jungle? She walked right into our trap."

"If you hurt her, I'll-"

"You'll what, Jack? See, it wasn't me who held that gun to her throat. I wasn't me who would have pulled the trigger. You see, when you chose to save her, you set a whole series of events up."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Jack asked.

"You see, before then, you didn't seem to have a weakness. Once you set your mind on something, nothing could change it. But then there was her. You saved her life over keeping the guns...and why was that, Jack?" He didn't answer. He wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of telling him. "Her life is much more important to you than the guns, isn't it?" Henry realised. "In fact, if I didn't know any better, I'd say that she was the only thing holding you together."

Jack glared at them. "Don't talk about her like she's some worthless object."

"On the contrary, Jack, she's so much more than that." Henry nodded. "She's worth so much more to you...and to us."

Jack's head jerked for a moment as he frowned. "What the hell have you done to her? You son of a bitch, where is she?"

"She's just down the hall, Jack. She's still unconscious. The dart had a longer effect on her."

"You have to let me see her." He told them, they sneered as if that was the last thing he was going to be allowed to do. "Please, she might have had a reaction to the dart." They didn't look won over by the idea, so he voiced his real fears. "If she's had a reaction and is can't regain consciousness then she could go into shock and die."

She couldn't die. She just couldn't. He needed her. He needed to know that she was okay.

Henry seemed to contemplate this idea for a while. After all, Kate was no use to them dead. But did he risk putting Jack in a room with her. All three of them in a room together could be potentially dangerous. What if they tried to escape? It wouldn't work, of course, but it would disrupt all of their plans.

"Bring him to her." He said, and Tom came forward, grabbing Jack's arm even though he was perfectly capable of walking himself down the corridor.

* * *

A/N: I hope you liked it so far! Please review!


	2. Special

Jack was thrown into a room, not questioning them because they had said they were taking him to Kate. All he cared about was making sure she was all right. If she'd had a reaction to the dart, he had no equipment, no medicine, nothing that could help her; only his bare hands, which was of very little use if she went into shock.

"Wait!" He said, as they went to close the door. Tom glared at him. "I need water." He told them. "She might be dehydrated."

Tom tossed a bottle of water in, and shut the door behind him, and Jack clambered onto his feet again, ignoring the ache in his leg from the dart that still throbbed.

He saw Kate tied to a chair in the middle of the room with her back to him, her head rolled forward, her mouth gagged, her hands bound, her eyelids no doubt shut in unconsciousness. If he hadn't been so concerned for her immediate safety, he would have turned around, found some way through the metal sheet of a door and torn the Others to pieces. Instead, he went over to her, kneeling at her feet.

"Kate? Kate, wake up!" He urged, but she didn't move. "Shit." He muttered, and leaned around her to untie the binds that held her to the chair. As they fell to the ground, she collapsed forwards, and he caught her.

He took her over to the corner of the room, where there was a small camp bed set up with a blanket on it. He leaned Kate up and took the gag of her mouth, and then her head fell back against his shoulder, her body completely limp in his arms. As she fell against him, he heard a loud groan escape her lips. Instantly, he moved her over to the camp bed, laying her out on her back.

"Kate? Kate?" He tried again, and she groaned. "That's it, Kate, listen to my voice, wake up now."

"Ja..." Came the weak reply. Her breathing became stronger, no longer shallow breaths blocked by the gag. Jack felt for a pulse, it was weak, but still there.

"Thats it, Kate, just open your eyes." He tempted, placing his hands on either side of her cheeks.

"Jack-" She asked again, sounding as thought talking was an effort.

"Yeah, it's me, it's Jack." He told her, and he heard her release a breath, perhaps one of relief. "I'm here, just, please, open your eyes..." He whispered.

Gradually, her eyes opened; thin slits that revealed the hint of green beneath their lids. "Good, good Kate." He told her, and her eyelids rolled up fully. She looked around her, trying to focus on her surroundings.

For the first time, he noticed her pale face, her freckles standing out predominantly against the sheer whiteness of her skin. There was a bruise forming just above her temple. The Others had lied, she had been hurt. He moved his fingers towards it, and she winced as his fingers touched lighting to the greying area.

"Sorry." He muttered, but the pain brought her conscious mind forward and her eyes met his.

"Jack." She murmered again quietly, but he heard her and nodded.

"I'm here." He assured her, his thumb rubbing against her cheek. "It's okay, you're going to be all right." He promised her.

She leaned into his hand, tilting her head slightly as her eyelids drooped again.

"No, no, no." He insisted. "Stay with me, Kate." Her eyes rolled back to meet his again. "You're going to be okay, I just need you to stay awake."

"I can't." She murmered, her eyelashes fluttering, but he shook his head.

"Yes, you can, just focus on my voice, okay?" She nodded. "I want you to talk to me until the nausea passes, about anything. If you take your mind off of it, it will pass faster."

"'Kay." She muttered.

"Tell me something." He told her, thinking of the first thing that came into his head to try and keep her awake. "When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?"

"A mom." She answered him. "I wanted to be a Mom."

He smiled. He expected her to say something like a teacher, or something working with kids. He could imagine her perfectly with a child, looking after them, but this wasn't the time for those thoughts. "I think you'd be good at that." He told her.

"Mom didn't think so. Said that I couldn't take care of kids."

Jack frowned to himself. "Of course you can. I've seen you with Aaron. You'd make a great Mom."

She gave a hint of a smile. "Wish it were true."

"It is true." He told her. "What kids did you want to have?" He needed to keep her talking, asking her questions about something she seemed comfortable talking about.

"Both. I wanted loads of kids. Boys and girls." She told him.

"Me too. I couldn't ever decide what I wanted more so I told my parents when I was growing up that I was going to give them hundreds of grandkids." He remembered.

"You never had kids?" Kate asked, becoming more aware of herself.

"Nope." He shrugged, thinking back to the day that Sarah had told him the pregnancy test was negative.

"Strange." Kate mumbled. "Thought you'd have loads."

He smirked a little. Did he really seem that suited for fatherhood? "No one to have them with."Kate sat up slowly, with Jack placing his hands on her waist as she swayed a little. To her surprise, she found that he didn't move them when she found her balance. "You okay?" He asked her.

She nodded, glancing around her. "Where are we?" She asked quietly.

"At The Other's camp." He told her.

"I woke up earlier...I think...you weren't here then..." She remembered with a creased frown. "How did you-"

"They told me that you had a reaction to the dart." Jack told her. "They let me in to take care of you."

She caught a sight of her arm again, and cradled it in her lap. "I don't think it was the dart I had a reaction to." She said, removing her eyes from his and looking down, ashamed.

"What do you mean?" He asked. "Did they make you take something?" She didn't answer. She just bit her lip and stared at her arm. He noticed how she was cradling her arm, and reached out.

She held her breath, waiting to see his reaction when he saw what had become of her arm. She put up no resistance as he gently placed her arm in his lap, observing it carefully. She saw the look of horror on his face when he turned it over and looked at the once unblemished, porcelain skin which was red and angry with needle marks. Some of the skin was beginning to darken in bruises, and she heard him swear under his breath.

"I'm going to kill them." He said simply, tracing his gentle fingers over the puncture marks. "I'm going to kill every single one of them."

The feeling of fear that he was holding for Kate at that moment was scaring him. When did he become so protective of her? Here she was, with god knows what pumped into her body, and he was ready to kill the next person who came into the room. There were too many needle marks for them to be just drawing blood, these were entering something into her bloodstream, and poorly, he might add.

"Jack?" Kate asked, and he detected a hint of fear in her wavering voice. "Is it bad?"

He brushed his fingers over the marks one more time. "I don't know." He muttered honestly. "We'll just have to sit it out, see what the after effects are." He saw her worried look as he turned to face her and gave her a reassuring smile, but it had no effect because she had seen that vengeful look in his eyes a few seconds ago. "There might not be any."

"But what if it's bad?" She asked fearfully.

He wrapped his hand around the one that he held in his lap, and stroked her arm softly as he looked back as he gave her an honest look, one that she trusted this time. "If it's bad, no matter how bad...if anything happens, I'm going to take care of you." He didn't see any relief in her glance, and he nudged under her chin ever so slightly. "Hey, I promise, okay? I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

This time, she responded and the corners of her mouth lifted ever so slightly, but the smile didn't reach her eyes. The usual sparkle that he saw in the green orbs was completely gone, replaced with a fear that he wanted to get rid of. He saw something other than happiness in her eyes, and he immediately felt the need to make it disappear.

"Where's Sawyer?" She finally asked, looking around.

"I don't know." Jack admitted. "They split us all up."

"Do you think he's hurt?" She asked, and then looked back at him worriedly. "Are you hurt?" She asked frantically.

He shook his head. "I'm fine." He assured her. "I just want to get you out of here." He realised what he had said, and let out a sigh.

"Jack-"

"I mean it, Kate. I'll do whatever they want me to, just as long as I know that you're home safe." Home...when had they started to call this place home?

She looked at him for a long time, and then shook her head. "I won't leave this place without you, Jack." She whispered, but he heard her loud and clear.

Jack leaned forward, taking her in his arms. An hour later, they had only moved momentarily, with Jack leaning against the wall, still sitting on the camp bed, but Kate was now sideways in his lap, her head resting against his shoulder whilst his arms kept her against him. He wanted to tell her to sleep, so that when she woke they would be that extra hour closer to getting home, but he couldn't bring himself to end the silence that blanketed them.

Being in his arms was all the comfort that Kate needed. He told her that he wanted her home safe, but that was exactly how she felt sitting in his embrace.

The door started to open, and she felt Jack's body tense up, and if possible, he pulled her closer, challenging them to try and pry her out of his arms. However, the only person who entered was Alex. She came over to the pair, and placed a pack of food and some more water down on the ground before them.

"I'm sorry if they hurt you at all." She whispered.

"What did they do to Kate?" Jack asked.

"They just did some tests, to make sure that she was the one they wanted." Alex revealed, her eyes darting around the room as though scared she was being watched.

"What do they want her for?" Jack asked again, as he felt Kate's breath hitch.

"You and her, you're special." Alex told them. "They want you to take care of some people."

"What do you mean?" Kate asked quietly.

"I can't tell you, I'm sorry." Alex said.

"Please?"

Alex met Jack's eyes, and saw the pleading that came from them. "They have children here. They raise them, but there's two that aren't responding well."

"Responding well?" Jack questioned.

"We never knew their parents, we found them as babies in the jungle." Alex explained. "Twins. They're becoming withdrawn, they need parents."

"You want us to become thier parents?" He asked incredulously. That was the Other's big plan?

"No. You just have to care for them." Alex explained, and looked back at the door before lowering her voice even more. "Please, the twins grew up with me...they are only little...when you leave, if you can get out before they let you go, will you take them with you? Please?" Alex asked hastily.

"Alex!" Came a voice from behind the door, and before Jack or Kate could complain about anything, the young girl was climbing to her feet.

"I have to go. I shouldn't have said so much." She muttered. "They will bring the children tomorrow."

Alex disappeared before either of them could speak again, leaving Jack and Kate in the room alone.

"Jack?" Kate asked after a few seconds of silence. "What did she mean that we were special?"

Jack pulled her close again, her head resting just under his chin, and he subconsciously placed his lips against her hair. "I don't know." He admitted.


	3. Caring

In Jack's arms still, Kate managed to drift into a light sleep, but Jack was adament to remain awake. He couldn't afford to sleep when he was still awaiting the possible after-effects of whatever was injected into Kate's arm. Why had he been so stupid? Why hadn't he asked Alex what they had injected her with? Already they knew that Alex was different to the others, and Kate had explained to him shortly after she left, that this was Danielle's daughter. She was the one who helped Claire escape - perhaps she would help them as well?

Kate's sleep was restless but deep at the same time, filled with nightmares, which had her holding desperately to Jack's shirt all night. She woke up once, and Jack gave her some water. Then he had lay her down on the camp bed, releasing her from his arms. She felt colder then, without his strong arms around her, and she almost begged him to take her in his embrace again, but she didn't; she lay obediently on the camp bed as he settled to sit next to her. Sleep came again to haunt Kate, even though she tried to fight off the terrible drowning of drowsiness, but within moments, she was back in her nightmarish dreams.

Jack watched her as she slept, keeping his eyes trained on the peaceful expression that had overcome her now that her mind was away from the fear of reality. He hoped that she had made her escape to somewhere else, somewhere in her mind that she knew to be a safe place. He remembered how earlier, whilst she had slept first, her fist had grasped a handful of his shirt, holding it so tightly in a ball that her knuckles became white.

When Kate awoke, she couldn't tell what time of day it was, or even what day it was. Jack still sat beside her, his head bent back against the wall in sleep, and she realised that he must have fallen asleep watching over her. She tried to turn on her side, to get more comfortable, but she felt so drugged that she couldn't move her arms. What was wrong with her? Her head was heavy, as if it were stuffed with rocks so that her skull was pressured from the inside. For a moment, she thought that it might split in two as she tried to raise it from the patheic form of a pillow it was resting on. Her toes and fingers tingled, her body was leaden, and as she looked around her, she found that the walls around her seemed to close in, then they retreated again, and nothing seemed to have the straight vertical lines they should have.

She forced out a small cry, uttering Jack's name for help, hoping to God that he heard her and woke up. "Jack," She finally managed to say, her voice coming out in the strangest voice, "Jack, wake up." He didn't wake up. "Jack." She tried again, and she let out a sigh as she heard him rousing.

"Hmm?" His eyes opened and he saw Kate calling to him. "Kate, what's wrong?" He said, immediately on the ball and kneeling before her.

"Jack..." She muttered weakly as she saw his face infront of her own.

He placed his hand on her forehead. "Shit." He mumbled. Her skin was like an oven. "You're burning up." He told her. He reached for the water bottle, and tore off the bottom of his shirt, wrapping it around itself and then wetting the cloth. He placed it on her forehead, and she let out a gentle moan as the icy cold water trickled down her temples. Then he raised the bottle to her lips, and urged her to drink more of the water. She didn't put up a fight, and welcomed the coolness of the liquid against her aching, dry throat.

He found the puncture marks from the needles on her arm, and swore again. "They must have given you something with a prolonging effect." He realised. "It's probably a form of local anesthetic."

She lay there helplessly until the nausea passed, and finally, the feeling returned to her limbs. "I-I can move." She told him, and lightly raised her arms and legs individually. For a moment, she feared that she would never do so again. She let out a sigh of relief and lay back against the pillow.

Jack was still sitting beside her, leaning over her. She saw the intense worry in his eyes, so much fear that it scared her - fear for her.

"I can't believe I let them hurt you." He whispered, his hands moving to brush her curly hair back from where it had stuck to her face in sleep.

"You didn't let them." She whispered back, as his hand came to rest on her cheek. Unlike previous times, he didn't move it, he just let it linger on her skin.

"I should have fought back, I should have been able to protect you-" He started, but she cut him off.

"You did protect me, Jack." She told him. "I remembered before I passed out when they found us. I know that you picked me up when the dart got me. I know that you tried to carry me out of there."

He drew in a breath, letting it out slowly. "I couldn't just leave you there, Kate." He said, his eyebrows kitting together as his forehead wrinkled in concern. "I couldn't turn my back on you."

"You left Sawyer." She reminded him. They had left Sawyer as he shouted the order for them to scatter. He had left the southerner sprawled on the ground, writhing in pain from the dart that hit him in the back of the neck.

"I don't care for Sawyer the way I care for you." He admitted after a long time.

She held his gaze, not breaking away from the compassionate eyes that were gazing down at her. "I'm sorry I ran." She whispered to him, tears starting to form in her eyes.

He shook his head. "I'm sorry I didn't come after you." He muttered back, and stroked her cheek with his thumb as he leaned his face down towards hers.

Their lips met; not like they had done before, in desperation and shock, but this time in mutual want and need. They kissed slowly, neither wanting to speed it up in case it came to an end, as this kiss signalled hope, and they needed plenty of it. Both of them had memories of their first kiss, but it was a pitiful remainder in their mind compared to the intoxity of this one. Soft lips brushed over each other, lingering as they pressed together, parting again only to return to their former resting place.

It was Jack who deepened the kiss, opening his lips further, and tracing the edge of hers with his tongue, begging for an entrance. She obliged with a gentle sigh, and all logical thought was thrown aside as she felt his tongue enter her mouth. The sweet comfort that came from each other's touch was all they needed to continue. Their tongues danced together, slowly at first, until Kate let out a tiny moan, sending shivers up Jack's spine. This urged him onwards, and he leaned even closer to her, deepening the kiss even more as her hands became embedded in his short hair.

The kiss showed everything that they had wanted to convey to each other. It released all the inner feelings that they couldn't find the words to say, because words didn't matter at the moment. In a situation where only survival matter, they needed something solid, something real to keep them going. However, what they needed most, was a reason to carry on, and that was each other.

A bang outside the room they were in shattered them apart, Kate's hands instantly moved from the base of his neck to become entangled in his shirt, gripping it tightly as if it were her only lifeline. Jack remained poised over her, protecting her from whatever it was that bustled around outside their door, and then the door slammed open so quickly that they both jumped.

"Son of a bitch!"

A body was thrown in, bound at the hands with a bag over their head, but from the clearness in the voice, it was certain that the person wasn't gagged. From the intense Southern accent with frustration and anger mixed it, it was also certain that this person was Sawyer.

"Sawyer!" Kate said breathlessly, relieved that he wasn't hurt.

Both Jack and Kate went over to him, and Jack undid the binds on his hand whilst Kate took the bag off of his head. He cricked his neck, swearing under his breath at the ache, and he sighed with relief as his eyes settled on Kate before him, and Jack coming around to his side. Behind them, the door slammed shut.

"Sawyer, are you okay?" Kate asked worriedly. Jack was a little jealous at the concern in her eyes, but found himself feeling pride, because while Sawyer was seeing worry, Jack had seen passion and love in her eyes only moments before; so much more intense than the worry she showed him.

"Just dandy, Freckles." He replied, and looked at her. "You okay?"

She didn't bother to point out the needle marks on her arm, she just nodded. "Yeah?"

"You bit your lip or somethin'?" He asked her suspiciously, and she raised her fingers to her lips subconsciously. "Either that or you've been getting some lip lock recently." Kate looked down with a gentle smile, and Sawyer looked round to see that Jack was also grinning to himself. "Well, I guess that makes me right, huh?" He teased.

Kate shook her head with a smile. "That's terrible, you know." She murmered.

"What is?"

"We're being held hostage, and all you can do is tease us about kissing." Kate pointed out, sitting down on the floor before she felt too nauseous.

Sawyer grinned stupidly. "Ooohhh...so you were kissin'?" He teased again.

"So what if we were." Jack shrugged.

"Don't get me wrong, Doc...I'm happy for ya both. This is just swell. I mean, now we can all stop tryin' to play matchmaker." Sawyer pointed out.

Kate turned her head to the side and laughed softly, as much as her energy would allow her, and she came face to face with two scared faces. She frowned. "Uh...guys." She murmered, getting Jack and Sawyer's attention.

They followed her gaze to the side, seeing two small children crouched in the corner beside each other.


	4. KoraLeigh and Joshua

Sorry it's taken me a while to get this chapter up everyone! Thank you to BuckyBug for her help!

* * *

"What the heck?" Sawyer muttered under his breath as he looked at the two youngsters. "Where'd the munchkins come from?"

"Alex told us they were coming." Jack realised, as Kate shuffled over to them.

"What?" Sawyer asked.

"She said that we'd been chosen to look after them." Jack explained tiredly.

Kate wasn't listening to Jack's simple explanation. Instead, she went over and sat by the children, a few inches in front of them. She looked at them just as curiously as they looked at her, only her head wasn't cocked to one side like theirs were.

The girl was sitting on the right, looking at Kate with her wide and curious eyes that looked wise beyond her years. There was a shadow in her eyes that suggested that she had seen more than she should have done at her age. In a way, this reminded Kate of herself when she was a child. In fact, minus the freckles, this child could easily have been Kate. She had the same dark hair that curled lightly, dropping down to her shoulders, and peircing green that captivated her.

The boy was almost the same, with dark hair that curled as it flopped against his forehead lightly. His skin was almost dangerously pale, like the girl beside him, and the resemblenece led Kate to suspect that they were related, probably twins. His eyes were softer than his sisters, though, a deep blue colour that was somehow reassuring.

Their clothes were torn and dirty, like the clothes that the Others wore,and they were so pale that it was clear that they didn't get enough sunlight. They almost looked sickly. They hadn't been treated very well.

"Hello." Kate said softly.

"Who are you?" The girl asked quietly, almost scared. Kate wondered what it was that was scaring her.

"My name's Kate." She said, keeping her voice soft to reassure them, but they still looked doubtful. The girl seemed to tweak a memory at the mention of Kate's name. "It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you." She added.

"Alex told us that you and Jack would look after us." The girl said after Kate told them her name. Jack crawled over and sat beside Kate, looking at the twins who looked at Jack interestingly.

"Are you Jack?" The boy asked him just above a whisper.

Jack nodded. "Yeah, I'm Jack."

"Are you _really _going to look after us?" The girl asked them hopefully, but her eyes were filled with more of a pleading.

Kate looked at the girl, and nodded firmly, seeing out of the corner of her eyes that Jack had done the same thing.

"Like a Mommy and Daddy?" The boy asked, his voice quiet still.

Kate looked at Jack, unsure of what to say to that. Jack gave her a reassuring smile. "I guess so." He told the children.

"We never had a Mommy and Daddy before." The boy told them, and looked at his sister with a smile. "We've had an Alex, but not a Mommy and Daddy."

Kate was unprepared for the girl, who suddenly launched herself at Kate. Luckily, Kate was able to steady herself before they fell backwards, and held on to the girl who hugged her tightly. She held her tightly back, and smiled gently. When the girl, who before had seemed hardened and defensive (which Kate couldn't blame her for), pulled back to look at Kate, she saw that she had tears in her eyes. "Are you our real Mommy and Daddy?" She asked hopefully.

Kate bit her lip, looking to Jack for a moment, who only mirrored her helpless look. She was set to take care of this children, who had clearly been mistreated in their time here, but was she ready to be called 'mom' by them?

"No, honey, we're not your real Mommy and Daddy." She told them, and watched as the hope in her eyes failed. "But that doesn't mean we're not going to look after you all the same." She assured. "We'll be like a Mommy and Daddy I suppose, but not really."

The girl nodded, and the boy looked up at Jack. "So...you're not my Daddy?" He asked him.

Jack shook his head. "No, sorry, kiddo, I'm not." He said.

"But...you're going to be like a Daddy?"

"Yeah, I'll be like a Daddy." He nodded.

"A nice Daddy?" He checked. "Not a nasty Daddy like them people?"

Jack shook his head firmly. "Definately not a nasty one. I'll be a nice one." He told him.

"I guess that's good then." The boy said, and got up to give Jack a hug like his sister was hugging Kate.

"My name's Kora." The girl said randomly. "I don't know what my next name is...but Alex told me my first name is Kora-Leigh. I don't like being called that though. That's what the nasty men call me. You can call me Kora though, if you want to."

Kate smiled at her. "That's a nice name."

"Yeah. It begins with K, like yours." Kora said. "And my brother's name begins with a J like Jack's!" She realised, that childish look of amazement crossing her face that showed them all that she wasn't completely broken.

"What's your brother's name?" Kate asked.

"His name's Josh." She said. "The nasty men call him Joshua...he don't like that. So me and Alex call him Josh. Sometimes Alex tries to make him laugh, and calls him Joshy instead, but it don't make him laugh. It makes him feel like a baby, he says." She babbled on as if she had known Kate for longer than two minutes. Funny how less than a minute ago she was shy and reserved, extremely defensive, but after a minute, had latched on to Kate like a shadow.

"So...what do we do with them?"

They turned to see Sawyer sitting there. "Whozzaat?" Josh asked Jack, as if Sawyer was invading their territory.

"His name's Sawyer." Jack told them. "He's our friend."

Sawyer raised an eyebrow at the mention of him being their friend, but didn't question it. A kid wouldn't understand the complexity of the so-called friendship between them all. Hell, adults barely understood it.

"Is he nice?" Josh asked suspiciously, eying Sawyer as if he expected him to suddenly turn into a purple dragon.

"Not always," Sawyer glared at Jack for saying that. "But I bet he'll be nice to you."

"Ha ha." Sawyer said sarcastically. "Now, if one of ya'll wouldn't mind explaining to me what the hell is going on here..."

"Mr Sawyer said a bad word!" Kora whined. "Tell him off Kate! Tell him off!" She insisted.

"Sawyer, don't swear in front of them." Kate scolded.

Sawyer looked at her as if she had suggested he run into the wall. "What? You're just going to let that kid boss you around?" He asked her.

"If you're going to use language like that in front of a kid, then yeah." She said. "You shouldn't influence young minds like that."

Sawyer grumbled. "Well, whatever. If you could take two minutes away from playing happy families, you mind explaining to me what's going on?" He said, taking out the swear word that had offended Kora before.

Jack explained to him about Alex coming to them and telling them that they were 'special', and that they were chosen to look after the kids.

"Hold on a sec." Sawyer protested. "Then why am I here?"

Jack simply shrugged. "I don't know."

"They won't mind, then, if I just walk on out of here..." He tested, wondering whether the Others were going to jump out of the walls and tie him up for suggesting it. Jack just looked at him tiredly.

"I said 'I don't know'. Not 'think of a stupid idea'." He pointed out.

"Since when has getting out of this place been a stupid idea?" Sawyer challenged.

"It's not, but walking out of here is."

"Says who?"

"Says the people who just held guns to our heads."

"Come on, Doc, we can't just let them have this. We've gotta make a break for it."

"You think I don't know that?" Jack snapped back.

"Yeah, I think you don't." Sawyer snapped back, instead of backing down sensibly. "Bluebeard and his mates bring along two kids and suddenly y'all are ready to settle down and stay put." He said, gesturing out to Kora and Josh. "Let me tell you something, I ain't waiting around for them to kill us."

There was a small silence, and then Kora spoke up. "Kate, are they going to kill us?" She asked quietly, going back into her defensive manner.

Kate shot Sawyer a glare, and stroked her hand down Kora's wavy hair. "No, they're not." She said determinedly. She still kept her eyes locked with Sawyer, who seemed to return the glare.

"Lyin' to a kid? Didn't think that was your style, Freckles." Sawyer murmered.

"I'm not lying." She said simply. "They're not going to kill us if they need us."

"If I were you, I'd hope that you're not lyin'." Sawyer said. "It's a bitch to have a kid's betrayed face in your conscience, what with the rest of your baggage."

"Shut up, Sawyer!" Jack spat, his eyes raging as he looked at him. The room fell into a deep silence again. "Alright, you're pissed off, so are the rest of us!" Kora didn't point out that Jack said a bad word. "We all want to go home, Sawyer, so don't take it out on her, she's done nothing wrong."

Kate looked at him, feeling glad that he was there sticking up for her. If Jack hadn't spoken up, she had no doubt in her mind that tears would have formed in her eyes. In fact, she was still fighting them off now. She didn't want to admit that having baggage was that much of a regret to her. She wanted to move on from her past. Jack had said that they all got a new start, and she wanted hers to start on the island. It was clear that they weren't getting rescued anytime soon, and so in the meantime, she had a chance to start a new life, a clean slate. Perhaps, she could even have that life with Jack.

Sawyer huffed, and surrendured, and Josh looked round at Kate and Kora.

"I don't think that Jack likes the Sawyer man."


	5. Pillow Talk

The majority of the first day was filled with nothing but random conversation. The children sat near Kate all the time, one on either side of her, sometimes one in her lap, as she was the one that they were immediately drawn to. Sawyer said little save for sarcastic comments towards Jack and Kate. Jack ignored these comments, and Kate only answered by telling him to shut up. They had more to think about now - like the arrival of the twins, for a start. What were they going to do when none of the three had any parenting skills whatsoever? They had no idea how to look after a child. In fact, without Jack's medical skills, they would be acting on instinct alone.

Another thought that was dragging in Kate's mind was Alex's comment. Why were her and Jack special? What made them so special for the twins? She couldn't think of anything that they had done that would have singled them out from the other survivors, so she started to wonder whether it was something to do with their pasts. It was then that she realised how little she really knew about Jack. She knew that his father had died in Sydney, but little else. Most of their times was spent talking about random things, but not their pasts. He seemed to avoid the topic like the plague. Perhaps he was just as ashamed as she was of something.

Jack sat near to Kate and the two children that had joined them. By talking to them, he managed to find out a bit about them and the lives they considered to be normal. He discovered that Kora talked the most and was more forward, whilst Josh was more than happy to follow his sister's lead. He realised that they had rarely been outside in their lives - maybe a few times a month at the very most. Something inside of him burned at the fact that these children weren't allowed to be children, when they were living to normal in comparison to their situation. They seemed to babble in an language only known by the pair of them, something that he had seen in young twins in the hospitals back home. The only thing they lacked, was a healthy complexion from exposure to sunshine, and the light of innocence in their eyes.

Talking away to Jack, who Josh immediately latched onto like a shadow, the twins described as well as they could what would happen to them once a month. What Jack could make out of it, they were administering the same 'vaccine' as they had done to Claire when she was captured, and that Desmond had been using regularly inside the hatch. Claire had used it a few times on the island, but Desmond had warned her off of it, claiming that it was useless. Jack, being a doctor, couldn't work out what it was. It didn't seem like an anti-body to fight off infection, so he wondered why they called it a vaccine.

Other than being injected with the 'vaccine' once a month, the children were placed in a room with other children. Jack asked them to name some of them...Emma...Zack...Walt...but they said that Walt was gone now. "He's gone back to his Daddy." Josh said quietly. "When the others go away and leave us, they go back to their Momma and Daddy."

Jack remembered Emma and Zack to be the name of the children that were in the tail section, as Ana-Lucia had mentioned once. She had said that their parents weren't on the plane, and so if what the twins were saying was correct, and they could only leave with their parents, then those two wouldn't be leaving anytime soon.

Kora told them how Alex brought them nice food for dinner rather than the less appetizing food that the 'nasty men' left them to eat. Alex, it seemed, had been only a child when the two were born, (when Jack has asked how old they were, they both held up four fingers), so she would have been around Walt's age when they were brought in as babies. As they were too young to remember, they weren't sure how they arrived there, so they planned to ask Alex the next time she returned.

Unfortunately, it wasn't Alex that brought them food and water that night. It was Bea. When she opened the door, the two children scampered into the corner of the room, their arms around each other, and cowered in the corner. Kate watched them, and then glared at Bea, wondering what she had done to make them so scared of her. Jack had to control himself as well. Sawyer was just staring at the food in her hands. She placed down a tray with a surprisingly nice arrangement of food on it. Potato salad and fruit, accompanied by five bottles of water - one for each of them.

"Tonight you will sleep in here." Bea told them, her eyes darting over to the single camp bed in the room. "Tomorrow you will be moved to bigger rooms."

With that, she turned around, and closed the door behind her, leaving a knapsack in her place. Jack went over to it, and pulled out the spare clothes that were clearly for the children.

"They're for the kids." He announced, bringing out two pairs of faded yellow pyjamas. He folded them out on the ground whilst Sawyer crawled over to the food, eyeing it blissfully.

"Potato salad." He looked up at the bare ceiling above them. "Somebody up there likes us." He muttered, returning his gaze to the large bowl.

Kate went over to the children, who had relaxed now that Bea had left. "Hey." She smiled softly as she bent down to their level. "You two hungry?" They nodded silently. "Come on then." She said, coaxing them out of their corner over to where Sawyer had brought the food into the centre of the room.

Jack was working on splitting the potato salad into five portions, two slightly smaller ones for the children, and the rest between him, Kate, and Sawyer, and then handed out the water bottles. Kora and Josh sucked hungrily at the contents of their salad, taking off the salad dressing before they ate it. The slurping noises they made were the only sounds in the room, save for the stratching of forks against plates. Jack, again, watched them with some amazement. When he had worked for a short time on the children's ward in the hospital (the job that he had the most satisfaction on, yet had to quit because it was simply to hard when losing a patient), he had seen fussy children, and those who would eat any food, but they were still complaining about the hospital food. The potato salad, which to the three of them who had not eaten it in some time, tasted like heaven, still reminded Jack of hospital food - yet the children ate it without a word of complaint.

When they had finished eating, Kora and Josh walked over and put their finished plates back on the tray in a pile, and then went to collect the pyjamas that Jack had folded out earlier. The three sat there, with open mouths, watching them. They were behaving like children in the Victorian era - so well behaved, speaking when spoken to, eating all their dinner, changing for bed straight afterwards - it was unreal.

They followed suit, placing their plates back on the tray, and noticed how the twins were struggling with the pyjamas - particularly the buttons. Kate smiled softly, and went over to them, crouching down to help them.

"You don't normally do this, do you?" She said to Josh, as she helped him to get his foot through the bottom of the trouser leg, and then did up the last few buttons on the shirt for him.

He shook his tiny head. "Alex does. Or Zack and Emma help us. Or Walt."

She gave him a smile. "Well, we can help you while we're here." She assured him, and he smiled back. Kora, she noticed, had managed to do her buttons up herself, but had done them crookedly, so that half of the shirt was highter up than it should have been. Rather than diminishing her cute proudness at being able to do it herself, Kate undid the for her, and showed her how to line the shirt up first. When she tried next time, she managed to do it all herself. Not wanting to be left out, Josh started to unbutton his shirt, and try it in the way that Kora had.

When they were done, they sat back down in the centre of the room with Jack and Sawyer. Josh stayed sitting next to Kate, but Kora decided that she wanted more, and sat down in her lap, looking out at the others around her from her new seat.

"So, who gets the bed?" Sawyer asked, nodding towards the sole camp bed in the room.

The others followed his gaze, and then back to each other. "We'll put the kids in it." Jack said quietly.

"Both of them?" Sawyer asked.

Jack nodded. "They're small, they'll both fit on it."

"Kinda cramped, though." He shrugged.

"Even so, it's just for one night." He said, remembering what Bea had told them about being moved to a different room tomorrow.

"Guess they really are trying to turn this into happy families." Sawyer joked. "You and Freckles can play Mommy and Daddy while I get to be friendly neighbour Sawyer."

Jack gave him a smirk. "Well, I don't know about friendly."

They fell into a silence again, this time for about half an hour, but they all remained awake. The silence was broken every now and again by the secret language of the twins, and Sawyer watched them, trying to figure out how it worked, while Jack and Kate just stared into space. The room grew darker through the light that faded through the gaps in the walls as the sun set, and it grew colder in the room. It was clear that the only blanket in the room was going to be used by the children when they slept in the camp bed, and Sawyer didn't seem to be affected by the cold. If he had been, he would have done his shirt up all the way rather than settling for the bottom few buttons to hold it together.

The silence was broken by Sawyer, with an absurd comment. "I think Freckles might be their Mom." He announced unsurely, but with a hint of reality in his voice.

"What?" Kate asked, confusion written all over her face. Jack also looked at him as if he were strange.

"You two could be their parents." He said, looking at each of them, and then back at the children.

"Sawyer, me and Kate never met before the crash, let alone conceieved two children." Jack said. "It's impossible, they can't be."

"Look." He said, pointing at Kora, who's face was directly below Kate's. Jack followed Sawyer's indication, and Kate just sat there, looking at Sawyer as if he were suggesting they were inside the Eiffel Tower. "Her eyes. Kate's eyes."

Jack looked at the emerald green that met him from Kora's eyes, and then looked up to Kate, who met his gaze, and begged him silently to admit that Sawyer was going crazy. They were identical. "Sawyer, this is impossible." Jack repeated.

"Their face shape is the same as well." Sawyer continued. "They've got the same nose as Jack. Little Josh there is your double, Doc. Either they're you're kids, or we've got some clones right here." He announced.

"Sawyer. I think I would remember giving birth." Kate scoffed. "That's not something I'd forget. I think I'd remember being pregnant as well. In fact, I think I might remember sleeping with Jack. They're not." She insisted.

"Well, maybe-"

"Sawyer!" Kate said, sharper this time. "No."

With Kate's insistance, the conversation dulled again, until the children fell asleep simultaeneously. They moved them onto the camp bed, and covered them with the blanket, and then Kate leaned back against the wall beside it, giving in to the shudder. A dizziness overtook her, and she leaned forward with her hands covering her head.

"Kate?" Jack asked, moving closer so that he was crouching before her. "What is it?"

"Dizzy." She said simply.

Doctor-mode overtook him, as he placed his hand on her back and edged her forward. "Lean down more." He instructed, until her head was between her legs. "That's it, take deep breaths."

He spoke to her, coaching her through until she nodded, and raised her head again, the fuzziness returned as she brought her head up too quickly, but she barely noticed over the exhaustion and the cold. She leaned sideways, falling against Jack, who moved them both so that she was lying down on the ground. He let her use his arm for a pillow, and lay his shirt over her to reduce her shivers. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that Sawyer was also lying down, his arms propping up his head. Jack lay down behind Kate, putting his arm around her stomach so that she shared his warmth.

Within minutes, she turned in his arms, and made herself comfortable against his chest. Sighing lightly, she opened her eyes and looked up at him. She remembered their kiss earlier that morning, before Sawyer and the twins had been brought to them. They never had the chance to finish it, or follow up on it, or even talk about it, because of the interruption. Feeling bold, she raised her head, and brought her lips to his briefly.

When she pulled away, she felt the arm around her back raise to the back of her neck, pulling her back to him. Their lips met again, and they deepened the kiss, both parting to allow the others entrance at the same time so their tongues clashed against each other. Kate's hand rested on his chest, whilst Jack's fingers drew gentle circles on the base of her neck. They parted for air, but rather than returning his lips to hers afterwards, Jack ducked his head and started to place gentle kisses on her neck. She let out a breath she didn't know she was holding when she felt his mouth against her pulse, and pressed her body closer to his, feeling him respond straight away.

The response of his body was a reality check for them, and Jack drew his lips away from her, staring down into her eyes. Without using words, they adknowledged the fact that they couldn't go through with this. Not with two twins sleeping beside them and Sawyer, no doubt still awake, only several metres away. They were already pushing the borders that had been set up around them. The knowledge that both of them wanted it was enough for them, and Jack rolled onto his back, pulling Kate with him so that her head was resting on his chest. She sighed, burying into his warmth, and within minutes, both of them were asleep.


	6. Monsters Under The Bed

**Okay...I know I haven't updated this in ages...sorry! I've got so many other stories that I've just been adding to this chapter when I can...thanks Liz for the kick up the butt on this chapter. This ones for you!**

In the middle of the night, Kate awoke. She wasn't sure what woke her up. She was just aware of a silence, follwed a minute or so by a shuffling around, and then the tiny padding of feet against the cold concrete floor. She could still feel Jack's arms wrapped around her, with her head leaning forward against his chest, and the sound of Sawyer's gentle snores was still drifting across the room to her. By method of deduction, she realised that one of the children must be walking around. She turned in Jack's arms, and the arm that was slung around her waist came to rest upon her stomach as she backed up against his chest.

"Kate?" She heard a voice ask in a shaky whisper. It wasn't just any whisper, it was Josh's whisper. That child-whisper that wasn't actually quiet, it was just sounding like a whisper.

She opened her eyes, seeing the little boy kneeling before her on the floor. "What's the matter, Josh?" She asked him quietly, keeping her voice low as not to wake any of the others in the room. She noticed that he was playing with the bottom button of his nightshirt, and she pushed her upper body off the ground so that she was level with him.

"Had a dream." He told her quietly. "It was scary." She saw the fear in his eyes, and felt her eyebrows burrow together into a frown.

She remembered when she was a child, and her mother worked late shifts at the diner. Diane had always worked at that diner. Sam had left when she was five years old, and it would just be her and Wayne in the house at night. Whenever she had fallen asleep, he would leave her and go to the bar, being back before Diane got home. But even when he did stay, and she was woken by monsters in the closet or under the bed, the one down in the living room wasn't there to dry her tears or soothe her back to sleep.

As she looked closer at Josh, she saw that there were tears on his face, starting to dry on his cheeks. Sitting up fully, she frowned even more, and as soon as Jack's hand fell against the ground, she had Josh gathered into her lap.

He looked up at her, and she used her thumb to wipe away his tears, giving him a reassuring smile as she did so. She wasn't really sure how to comfort children. Mind you, there was a lot of things she didn't know what to do with children. She had come to realise, however, that things just spring to mind that need doing, like the twins with their pyjamas on earlier that evening. They had needed help, so she helped them. Now, Josh needed a cuddle, so she gave him one.

"Are you still scared?" She asked him in a whisper.

He nodded, sniffing.

There was a brief silence, where neither of them moved or spoke, and Kate tried to figure out what to do. Should she send him back to bed, telling him there was no such thing as monsters? Or should she stay up with him, making him feel comfortable until sleep took him once more? Deciding on the latter, she pushed herself further away from Jack, and leaned her back against the wall so she could sit up more comfortably. To her left, Jack was still sleeping soundly, unaware of her moving, and to her right, Kora was still sleeping in the cot, unaware of her brothers moving. Across the other side of the room, Sawyer was still sleeping, unaware that anyone in the room was moving around.

Leaning back, she settled Josh in her lap so that he was sitting sideways. He looked up at her as she wiped away the few remaining tearstains underneath his large blue eyes. His eyes were so captivating, she thought. They reminded her of her mothers eyes, and her brothers. They both had blue eyes that were so bright, she was unsure that she had ever seen such a colour anywhere else. Now, she was seeing it again, and for some reason, this comforted her.

Josh continued to look up at her, watching her gaze down at him. She stroked his brown curls, and gave him a gentle smile. "What was your dream about?" She asked him quietly, not wanting to wake any of the others around them.

"Monsters." He said simply, keeping his voice low like hers. It was still thick with sleep. "Monsters...and them."

She knew who he meant by 'them'. The Others. The children were so scared of them. No wonder they were so well behaved, they seemed to be terrified into submission.

"There's no such thing as monsters." She told him...wow, she thought, that sounded very parental. That must be a line that every parent said at one point during a child's life. Strange to think that she was doing it for a child that she barely knew.

"But there's such thing as them." He contradicted. "Emma says they're monsters."

Emma and Zack, they had learned earlier, were two of the children that used to stay with them. This group also included Walt. Kate didn't know what to say to that. True, they were monsters, but she couldn't tell him that...he'd start thinking that they walked around with forked tails and horns.

"Josh," She started quietly, "When Emma said that, she didn't mean it..."

"Was she lying?" Josh asked.

"No." Kate shook her head. "She wasn't lying. She was saying it because thats what they reminded her of." She explained. "If they were nasty to her, they would remind her of monsters."

"And if they were nice to her, they'd remind her of her Mommy and Daddy." Josh realised, catching on to her reasoning.

Kate smiled. "Yeah, that's right." She said. "But just because they remind her of monsters, that doesn't mean that monsters are real."

Josh nodded slowly, believing her. "So...there aren't any monsters under the bed?" He asked.

Kate shook her head.

"Are you sure?" He asked. "You promise?"

She nodded. "I promise. Look." She said, leaning forwards. They both leaned down towards the ground so that they could see underneath the cot that Kora still slept on. Sure enough, it was empty other than the small piles of dirt that littered the room. "See...no monsters."

"What if you can't see them?" Josh asked. "What if they're invisible and hiding?"

She had to smile at his questions. "They're not." She assured him. "You see, most things you can see, but some things you can't see. But monsters aren't real. Even if they were, they'd be something that you'd be able to see."

"Why can't you see some things?" He asked, forgetting about the topic of monsters for a moment.

Ah, now she seemed to have backed herself into a corner. How did she explain this to a four-year-old. "Umm...some things you just can't see." She explained. "Not with your eyes."

"What else do you see with?" He asked her. "I've only got eyes to see with."

"Somethings you see with your eyes..." She said, and then brought her hand down to his chest and placing it over his beating heart. "...others you see with your heart."

He burrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "I don't get it." He told her. "Has your heart got eyes?"

She shook her head. "No...it sees things in it's own special way." She said. "Like your sister. You love your sister, don't you?" Josh nodded. "That's something that everyone else can see with their eyes, but when you see it, you see it with your heart."

"Why?"

"Because love is a very special thing." She told him. "People can see when you love someone, and they can see how much you love them, but when you know that you love someone, no one can see it like you can."

"I still don't get it." He told her after a minute.

"You will, Josh. You will. When you get older." She promised him.

"I am older." He told her. "I'm a big boy."

She smirked slightly, touching his curls again. "A bigger boy, then." She said. "But one day, you'll understand."

He nodded, and leaned against her chest, shifting around until he was comfortably laying against her. She waited until he was still, and then brought her arms around him, encircling him into her embrace. They sat together in silence for a while, and just when she thought he had fallen asleep again, he spoke up.

"Kate?" He asked her.

"Yeah, Josh?"

"You feel like home." He told her, and she smiled to herself even though he couldn't see it. "If I ever meet my Mommy...I hope she's nice like you."

Only a metre away, Jack, who had been awake throughout the entire exchange, smiled to himself and drifted back to sleep.

-------

Bea, Alex and Henry stood facing computer screens. It was the middle of the night, and Alex was exhausted, but she was watching the image on screen with something of a longing. The picture showed the room that the survivors and the children were in, and had closed in on the part of the wall that Josh and Kate were sitting against. They couldn't hear what was being said, as the camera was small enough not to be noticed in the room, but it didn't have the size to contain audio surviellance as well.

"Jealous, kid?" Henry asked her.

Alex turned to Henry, giving him a brief scowl before she returned her gaze to the screen. She said nothing.

Henry stepped closer to her. "You made a classic mistake, Alex. You got attatched to them." He said, meaning the children. "You knew this day was coming."

"I know." She said after a moment, even though she wished she was wrong.

"The tests are nearly over now." Bea explained. "Once the bonding process is over, they'll be free to go."

Alex looked at Bea. She would be sad to see that day. "I know." She said obediently.

Henry left the room, leaving Alex and Bea staring at the computer images for a moment longer. Alex watched as Josh's eyelids drooped, and finally closed whilst Kate stroked his hair to keep him calm. No more monsters under the bed for him. After a while, the girl felt a hand on her shoulder, and then Bea spoke before she left the room.

"We're not bad guys, Alexandra." She reminded her. "We've done our work, it's time for the children to be with their parents now."

**Shock! What do you think of that twist?**


	7. Morning

Kate awoke the following morning the sound of a gentle scuffle. She had always been a light sleeper, being on the run. She opened her eyes a fraction, and then a bit more once she realised that the scuffle was right in front of her, and was, in fact, touching her forehead gently.

"Sorry." Jack mumbled to her quietly when he realised that he had woken up.

"What are you doing?" She asked him.

"Shh...the kids are still asleep." He said, gesturing down to Josh, who was still asleep on Kate's chest, and Kora, who was lying on her side curled into a ball on the cot. The way he said it seemed to natural to him. "I was just checking this bruise." He said, gently fingering the greying mark by her temple. "The swellings gone down on it." He gave her a smile. "I think you'll live."

"That's good to hear." She whispered back, dropping her voice to a quieter level this time. She glanced down at Josh in her arms, and tightened her hold on him where it had slackened in her sleep. "He wake up again?" She asked him.

Jack shook his head. "I woke up and saw you two over here. He was fast asleep again and Kora hasn't moved from when we put her down." He told her.

Kate nodded, looking over at the girl to see that she hadn't moved an inch. "She must have been really tired." She mused.

"She was trying to keep her eyes open for as long as possible last night." Jack remembered. "I kept seeing her eyes dropping but she was determined to stay up." He smiled gently at the sleeping child. "Like I used to on Christmas Eve."

Kate's expression turned to that of a sad one. "They probably don't even know what Christmas is." She whispered quietly. Christmas had never really been good for her. Her mother would always work the nightshift at the diner, and before she had left, she would argue with a typically drunk Wayne. But never to have heard of Christmas? Surely that was worse than a bad Christmas.

"Alex said that if we get out of here to take them with us." Jack reminded her. "We've been on this island for about seven weeks...it's probably the start of December now." He realised, then smiled at her. "If we get out of here, we'll let them have a Christmas."

She gave him a smile to humour him, wondering how he could think even that far into the future at a time like this. They didn't even know if they would be alive by then. They had no idea what the Others had planned for them. She looked up into Jack's eyes, and for once, the pessimist that he was had vanished. He actually had hope in his eyes, and that transfered onto him. This time yesterday, they had been kissing. Last night, they had been kissing again, and it had very nearly turned into something more. Luckily, it hadn't. No, that would have to wait for another time, where they had privacy.

He stared back at her, and then leaned forward, capturing her lips in his. She let out a gentle sigh as he pulled away, and that sound spurred him on. He kissed her again, placing his hand on her cheek and parting her lips with his tongue. For a moment, they forgot where they were, and what was happening around them, and just enjoyed the clashing of their mouths against each other.

"Can't leave you alone for a second, can we?"

The Southern drawl reached them, and they broke apart, looking over at a now-awake Sawyer. Kate sighed, leaning her head back against the wall. Damn Sawyer, she had been enjoying that kiss. Jack was equally disappointed, and leaned up against the wall beside her, in between Kate and the cot.

Sawyer continued on when he got no reply from either of them. "Turn our backs on you and you've already got your match of tonsil tennis on the go." He laughed to himself. "You're like rabbits."

"Sawyer." Kate hissed at his loud voice. "Will you keep it down? You're going to.."

"Morning time!" Kora said brightly.

"...wake the kids." Kate finished under her breath, though no one but Jack heard her.

Josh also awoke on Kora's call, but was, as usual, quieter than his twin. Kora chattered away from the moment she had woken up, usually to Jack, who had been more than happy to humour her on her talking yesterday.

But then it started.

"Jack..." Her chirpy voice said. "I'm hungry."

"I'm hungry too." Josh added.

"When's breakfast?"

Jack bit his lip and looked to Kate and Sawyer, who shrugged. No food had been left over from their meal last night, and there was no new food in the room. Perhaps they were getting fed when they were being moved to this new room that had been mentioned before.

No sooner had he thought this, the door to the room opened, and Henry and Bea entered. Kate noticed how the twins looked around to see if Alex was coming in too, but the teenage girl stayed on the other side of the door with her back to them.

"Time to go." Henry said sharply. Sawyer got to his feet, as did Kate and Jack, who lifted Kora into his arms. Josh, however, who was curled up on the camp bed, didn't move. He just stared at Henry with a scared expression on his face. Henry glared at him. "I said time to go." He repeated to the boy who didn't move. "Joshua!" He snapped harshly.

Josh jumped to his feet and scarpered to Kate, keeping his eyes on Henry as he did so. He hid behind Kate's legs, and she picked him up as Jack had done to Kora. Henry and Bea left, indicating for them to follow. Kate frowned at the gesture and they walked towards the door. Where they just going to let them freely walk compared to how they had been treated before?

Clearly not, as when they left the dingy room behind them, more of them were standing there, holding guns. Both of the children flinched at the sight of the guns, and were instinctively held closer to the adult carrying them. They walked through corridors for what felt like half an hour. They passed more Others, who stared at them with the children in their arms, and whispered amongst themselves. Again, Kate frowned, what were they staring at? Were they the latest lab rats?

Kora leaned over Jack's shoulder at one point, spotting Alex walking behind them. "Alex!" She said in a hushed whisper, but still sounding excited.

Alex didn't answer, but just placed her finger over her lips, signalling for the child to be quiet, but it was too late.

"Kora-Leigh, do I have to remind you to be quiet?" Henry asked threateningly, without looking over his shoulder at her. She froze in Jack's arms and then turned back to look away from Alex. "That's better." He added, when there was no replying answer from the girl.

They turned another corner, and Kate found herself even more confused as to their location. She had been trying to keep track of which way they were being taken, just in case they had an opportunity to escape, but they were led through so many different corridors, and so many corners were turned, that she had lost track some time ago. Then...they finally reached the door.

"Welcome to your new home."


	8. New Homes

Chapter 8:

At first, all they could make out of the room before them was two tall windows covered with thin, ragged draperies. Then, Henry entered into the room a little, feeling around beside the open door to find a light switch. Instantly, the room was filled with a dim light, perhaps no stronger than that from a bedside lamp, but nonetheless, it showed up what they were venturing into.

They were escorted into the room, and then they turned to face their captors, wondering what happened next.

"This room has three adjoining bedrooms. One double, one single, one twin." Henry told them, gesturing to the rooms as he did so. "I trust, as adults, you can manage to control the children, and keep them quiet. The rooms will be kept clean and tidy, and that goes for the bathroom as well. There will be quiet from you as well, no yelling or screaming. Anyone caught trying to escape will suffer the consequences."

"Consequences?" Jack questioned. "What consequences?"

"No doubt you shall find out if you try our patience, Jack." He replied with a twisted smile, which, along with his scars from the beating from Sayid, made him look like the typical villain.

With that, Henry, Tom and Bea left the room, but Alex hesitated and remained behind for a moment, sneaking closer to them. The two children strugged out of Jack and Kate's grasps, and went over to her.

Alex bent down to their level. "It's all right now." She assured them. "Trust me. You won't be here much longer." She whispered.

Kate heard her, and looked at Jack. Did this mean that they would be leaving soon?

"You'll come too, right?" Kora asked her.

Alex didn't answer. They took this to mean that she wasn't coming with them. Alex gave them as strong a smile as she could manage. "Just please, be good." She begged them. "Do what you're told, do whatever Jack and Kate tell you to do. Okay?" The twins nodded.

"Alex!" Came Bea's call from outside.

Alex straightened up, and then went to Jack and Kate, after throwing a hesitant look back at the open door, wondering whether she had a few more moments to spare. "Thank you." She whispered to them, and then departed from the room before anyone else could call her.

The door was shut, and they heard a locking mechanism activate that was clearly stronger than a key, yet they had seen no trace of one from the outside.

"Where the hell are we?" Sawyer asked, looking around him.

The others followed suit, looking at what had been called their new home. It was a large-ish room, that was, perhaps, about a ten foot square. There was a large dresser over to one side of the room with five drawers on it. Curious, Kate went over to it, and opened the drawers. Inside was their clothes, or rather, all the clothes that had been packed for their trip, as well as some spare t-shirts in all the right sizes courtesy of their new 'tenants'. The bottom two drawers were filled with more clothes, belonging to the children from the size of them.

Sawyer walked over to the windows, pulling back the curtains. Synthetic light, much like in the hatch they had discovered, shone back at him through the windows that had bars over them. Cursing, he replaced the ragged curtains that were dirty and ragged. He'd rather see no light at all than see that light again.

Jack explored the rest of the room, whilst Kate carried on rooting through the clothes. There was two weakly padded armchairs and a matching couch. Aside from this, there was a worn rug that covered the no doubt cold and hard floor, and a cards table on one side with four chairs around it.

They heard a distant giggling, and then all their heads snapped up, looking around them.

"Where are the kids?" Kate asked, noticing that they were no longer in the room.

One of the adjoining doors was open, and they followed it, looking through into the first of the bedrooms. This was the single bedded room. The room was white-walled, white-floored, and filled with white objects. The only thing that provided a contortion of colour was the brown coloured bed-spread that covered the white mattress sheet underneath.

"I'm guessin' this is my room." Sawyer assumed.

"Why?" Kate asked.

"You heard the Captain." He said. "One twin, one single, one double. Twin room must be for the munchkins, and the double bed for you two rabbits, which leaves me by my lonesome in here." He explained, watching the twins jumping up and down on the bed.

Josh jumped a bit too high, getting carried away with Kora's game of bouncing on the mattress, and would have landed on the ground if Jack hadn't lunged forward with lightening reflexes and caught him.

They ventured into the next room, directly next door, and found that it was the bathroom. It was simple enough, exactly like the one in their hatch, with a large mirror with a counter underneath, and a sink in the counter. There was a bath with a shower-curtain around it, which Jack pulled back to reveal a shower head and racks with shampoo and cleaning products on it.

They crossed to the other side of the main room, where the two other doors were. The first was the twin room, and, like the first room, everything was white, except for the bedspreads, which were made up of several bright colours, definately intended for childen. Both sides of the room were symmetrical, matching colours and shapes where ever there was something placed.

The final room, which had been narrowed down to Jack and Kate's room, had a double bed in the centre of it. The bedspreads were brown again, like Sawyer's, but unlike his, there was a brown undersheet as well.

They went back into the main room, discovering a tray on the cards table in the corner that hadn't been there before. Upon it was three seperate meals in small quantities for all of them. Jack sorted it so that they were clearly divided. Bacon, eggs, toast and cereal made up their breakfast. Sandwiches and hot soup in a small Thermos for their lunch, and fruit and vegetables for their dinner.

They ate hungrily, assuming that more food would be brought tomorrow, and when they had finished, the only person who didn't have a clean plate, was Kate.

"What's the matter?" Sawyer asked her, noticing the two rinds of bacon still on her plate, untouched. "Don't like your pig products?"

"She's a vegetarian." Jack said, just before Kate explained herself. She gave him a smile. She never thought he would have remembered that from over sixty days ago.

Jack gave an extra rasher to both of the children, not even considering eating one himself.

The morning started to pass with exploring. Kate found that some of the clothes in the drawer for the children were baby outfits. She admired them with a smile before putting them back in the drawer. She imagined that the twins would have been beauitful babies.

After that, she went into the new bedroom that had been appointed hers and Jack's and lay down on the bed. She wasn't sure why, but she suddenly had the desire the be away from every single person in the room. Except for-

"You okay?"

She raised her head from the pillow on the bed, and saw the only person she wouldn't mind seeing crossing the room and sit beside her on the bed beside her.

"Yeah." She said tiredly, putting her head down again.

He frowned at her, and she could see the concern swimming in his chocolate brown eyes. Beautiful eyes, she observed. The sort of eyes you could easily spend an eternity looking into. "You're not feeling sick again?" He checked, remembering her nausea the previous night.

She shook her head. "I just...I don't know what's going on here." She told him, gesturing to the room around him.

"I don't think any of us do." He said, trying to offer some comfort. "At least we're together, and we're all okay."

She gave him a strange look. "Jack, don't you find this the tinest bit strange?" She asked him. "We've been kidnapped, brought into what appears to be a small apartment, and we're being told to help raise two children who look so much like us it's scary."

"Yeah, I think it's very strange." He agreed, cupping her cheek. "But I've got you to keep me sane."

"Why us?" She asked. "Alex said we were special. What's so special about us?"

Jack sighed. "I know a lot of things that are special about you, but I don't think me and Henry are thinking on the same wavelength...or at least, I hope not." He said, drawing a gentle smile to her lips.

"Don't worry." She assured him. "I'm not going off for some fling with Henry."

He smiled back, and leaned down, capturing his lips with hers. She gave a delighted sigh when he pulled back sightly, only to lean back into her straight away, and thrust his tongue between her parted lips. She brought her hand to the back of his neck, gently moaning at the contact between them as she pulled him down closer to her.

He kept his weight supported with one arm, whilst the other still caressed her cheek. As his upper body was suspended over hers, he deepened the kiss further, the vibrations of her moan against his mouth causing him to groan at the sensation. Their tongues duelled, and Jack felt Kate's hands sneaking underneath the bottom of his shirt.

Her hands against his bare skin heightened his emotions, which he poured into the kiss with all that he could. His hand left her cheek, and trailed down her sides to her hip, where he skimmed his hand across the skin that was revealed by her t-shirt riding up a little. He pulled his lips away from hers, and brought his attention to her neck. It was only when he found a sensitive spot just abover her collarbone, which emitted a whimper from her lips, that he realised just how far this was going.

He pulled away from her neck, and brought his lips back to her parted ones, greeting her with a passionate kiss that he didn't deepen. "Kate..." He said, getting her attention.

She opened her eyes, and looked up at him. "We shouldn't be doing this..." She whispered against his lips, grazing them against each other as she moved them.

"I want to." He revealed. "But, we can't, not yet."

"Why not..." She pleaded, her voice high with desire.

"They might be watching us." He said, and then he smiled, kissing her again. "And we don't know how soundproof these walls are."

She smiled, and kissed him again, withdrawing her hands from his shirt. "I can't help it if you're irresistatble."

"The only irresistable one here is you." He told her, sliding his hand back up her side as he shifted his weight a little so that he was more raised above her. He kissed her again, deepening it, but careful not to let themselves teeter over the edge of desire.

They broke apart, sucessfully controlling themselves, and looked deep into each others eyes, seeing nothing less than complete devotion towards each other. She wondered at first whether some unknown breeze was gently pushing her hair, but instead, it was Jack's hand, softly stroking her curls. Silently, he whispered loving words at her, the words that she was afraid no one would ever say to her.

"Do you believe in love at first sight?" She asked him, feeling it was a stupid question, but needing to know.

He hesistated. "I don't know." He admitted. "Before we crashed here, I'd see a pretty woman, and feel some kind of an attraction towards her. Or sometimes, when I'd talk to them, I'd be able to open up to them straight away, but not feel a thing towards them. But I met a woman once, who's beauty was matched by everything else, her intelligence, and her heart. I think I fell in love at first sight with her." He told her.

She smiled at him, not asking who the woman was. "Do you think it was a stupid question?" She asked him.

He shook his head, stroking her hair behind her ears. "God, no. You're not stupid at all." He assured her.

She suddenly felt a wave of curiosity. "Tell me more about this woman." She requested.

He nodded. "She's beauitful...more beautiful than any other woman I've ever seen in my life. She's so smart, but sometimes she seems to know too much for her own good. She's curious, see, and it gets her into trouble. But at the end of the day, she's not as strong as she makes herself out to be. She's got a vulnerable side to her, and it's just as beautiful as any other side of her."

Kate swallowed as she felt his hand stroke at her cheek again. "Do you love her?" She asked hesistantly.

"Sometimes, when I see her weaker side, I want to hold her until everything's gone." He said, without answering her questions. "Sometimes I want to kiss her, and forget everything in the world but her. Every other time, I just want to be with her, however I can, just so that I can be close to her, and know that she's thinking of me just like I'm thinking about her. But love? Do I love her?" He paused for a moment, but Kate could see in his eyes that no thinking was taking place. He kissed her briefly. "Yeah, I do love you, Kate."

When he said her name, she smiled up at him, keeping her tears hidden back in her eyes as she kissed him one more time before embracing him tightly. Those were the words she needed. Now, maybe, she could feel as at ease in this place as he could.

"I love you too." She mumbled into his shoulder, knowing that he could hear her clearly because his arms tightened around her as he heard the words. "I love you."


	9. Bubbles

Within three days, they had adopted something of a routine to their new lives. The children woke up in their rooms, and would pad silently through the central room to the opposite bedroom, where Jack and Kate would be laying together. Many times, Kate would find herself already awake, awaiting their tiny patter as they crossed the room together, whispering to one another.

After curling into bed with them, they would fall back asleep for about half an hour, until they were all fully awake. Then, they would reawaken, and Kate would dress them in one of their spare sets of clothes, whilst Jack seperated out some of the breakfast for them, all of them leaving Sawyer to his own devices to wake up when he wished. They still weren't sure when their food was delivered. They assumed that it was some time in the middle of the night, seeing as it was always there when they woke up, and the previous days plates were gone.

On the morning of their third day, Kate discovered that their laundry was also being done. Whilst their clothes from the day before were usually going back in the drawers with the others when they changed, she put on a shirt she had worn already to discover that it had a fresh smell about it. She still wore her own clothes, none of the shirts that had Dharma stamps on them. She felt strange wearing someone elses's clothing, especially when she wasn't sure what this clothing was like.

The days dragged by monotonously. They didn't know what to do with the days, when all they had was time and nothing to fill it. There was nowhere new to look, because they had already searched the entire place for any weaknesses which might aid an escape. There were none, they were truly trapped. The synthetic light made them believe that they were either underground, or even just in the centre of a large complex.

Kate sometimes found herself remembering what it had been like a few weeks ago, before they had become scared of the Others, when all they were focused on was survival. To her, this is what prison would feel like. She only had memories of the things she had done, like the times she had found herself swimming with Sawyer at the waterfall, and when she was out picking seeds with Jack. The only thing that told her that this wasn't a prison was the fact that she was allowed to stay with Jack and Sawyer.

Sawyer had found a deck of Dharma branded playing cards in a drawer in his room. He played a lot of games. Unfortunately, they couldn't play poker with nothing to bet with, but they played rummy, and blackjack, and on the times when neither Jack nor Kate wanted to play, he played solitaire. It was a game that calmed him down. His uncle had taught it to him as a way to control his anger after his parents died. Whenever little James found himself in a sitation where his anger was being tested, he would go into his room and play solitaire, losing himself in besting his personal time until his aunt called him down for dinner.

At one point, he had tried to teach the twins how to play. When he had suggested the idea, Kate had insisted that it was a useless idea, because they were too young. Sawyer, however, insisted otherwise, and had tried his hardest to teach them. Kate had been right, however. Once they realised that it was impossible to beat Sawyer at blackjack when they were having trouble adding the higher numbers, it stopped holding their interest.

Kora and Josh quickly developed a bond with Kate, and she knew that this was because they had no experience of men being kind towards them. They had, however, had Alex to care for them, and she guessed that this is why they immediately felt safe around her.

They also recognised the good in Jack, and after Kate explained to them what a doctor did, they would go to him when they fell on the ground with their cuts and bruises. Sometimes, they would even manage to get splinters from the tiniest peices of wood found in the ground. Jack would comfort them, and whilst they taught him what was needed from bedside manner, he carefully patched them up with a medical kit he was thankful to find in the bathroom.

The twins made sure that any slight injury, whether it hurt or not, was enough to make them go to Jack. These small injuries were enough for them to demand the cuddly, child-like things that they had never experienced, and because of this, they were glad to give it to them. Kate would take them into their room in the evening, and sing quietly to get them to sleep. She never sang loudly, only just enough for the twins to hear, but still, Jack and Sawyer heard through the open door. They found hope in her voice just as the twins did.

They loved the attention that Kate would ravish them with when she gave them goodnight kisses and tucking them in, because they had never experienced. They never sensed her unease because she was nervous around children. They never caught on to the fact that every time she looked at them, she saw her and Jack, and part of that scared her. But she loved the attention that she recieved from them. It was strange that she was in a place where at first she had felt threatened and scared, but now, for the first time in a long while, she felt really loved.

On the third morning morning, just after Kate discovered the clean clothes, she realised that they, also, could do with a clean. She ventured into the bathroom, eyeing the overhead shower. It was probably the smallest overhead she had seen in her life of motel showers, but it was clean, at least.

She pinned back the shower curtain, which was white and desperately thin, just like everything else in the place, and then sat on the edge of the bath to push the plug into the drain. For a moment, she half expected the bath rim to collapse underneath her, but it didn't.

The shelves caught her eye, and she looked at the many Dharma branded bottles. Hair shampoo...hair conditioner...bath creme...shower gel...there was also some washclothes as well, and she brought two of them down. They were all white in colour, so it didn't make any difference which one. Behind the clothes was a hidden bottle, one that had 'bubble bath' imprinted on it.

She drizzled some into the tub, which was now half full, and when it proved to be a little on the pathetic side for bubbles, she adgitated the water to try and make more of them. Even so, there wasn't many, but it wasn't looking quite as despressing as a tub of water by then.

She went back into the central room, where Jack was reading a book to Josh. In the children's room, they had found that one of the boxes was filled with books, all for children, but some for adults, which Sawyer had been secretly pleased about. She stood in the doorway to the bathroom, watching the concentration on Josh's face as he followed Jack's words with his finger on the page, trying to learn to read to Jack's slow words and clear pronounciation.

She went to Kora, who was sitting on the floor by Sawyer, and clearly annoying him while he tried to read. She was humming to herself, and Kate could easily see the irritation that Sawyer was trying to hide from the girl.

"Kora, bathtime." Kate said with a smile. She tried to make it sound light because she had heard horror stories from Rose about when she had been bathing her daughter when she was young. In fact, any one with children had told her horror stories about bathtime.

Surprisingly, though, Kora jumped to her feet, still humming to herself whilst she followed Kate into the bathroom. For privacy's sake, Kate shut the door behind them.

She helped her undress from her pyjamas, and then bundled her into the bath. Kora sat there for a moment, and then clapped her hands into the bubbles, laughing when they went spraying to all directions.

"What are they?" She asked Kate.

Kate looked slightly surprised. "They're bubbles." She told her, wondering why she didn't know what bubbles were. If Dharma branded bubble bath, surely they had been given a bubble bath before. It was one of the joy of being a kid, wasn't it? Filling the tub right up to the rim with bubbles and splashing around.

"I like them." Kora decided.

Whilst Kate bathed her, she remembered her own childhood. She could remember her mother giving her a bath, but she was older than Kora, because they were talking about something, she couldn't remember what, but it was more involving than bubbles. Perhaps it was about her day at school. Yes, it was, she remembered. She needed to have an early bath because she had come home from school with mud in her hair, and her mother was gently scolding her about doing the things that the boys were doing.

It wasn't long before Kora discovered that splashing the bubbles around the bath was, indeed, very fun, and pretty soon, Kate was soaked through herself. On the other side of the door, Jack and Sawyer heard the laughs coming from the other side of the door. They smiled, not even daring to interrupt whatever was going on in the bathroom between Kate and Kora.

After playing, however, Kora had sat obediently still whilst Kate washed her skin, and her hair. And through this, they talked.

"I remember when I was your age." Kate told her, rubbing the shampoo into her hair gently. Kora was holding her head back slightly, as Kate instructed so that the shampoo wouldn't reach her eyes. "I was always off playing with the boys, and I climbed so high into a tree that my Dad had to come and get me down."

Kora giggled. "I want to climb trees."

Kate gave her a little smile. "One day you will." She promised her. Alex's comment the other day had given her a hope that they wouldn't be there for much longer.

"Will you teach me how?" Kora asked, her green eyes sparkling with excitement at Kate. She could tell that the girl was becoming more relaxed around them because she was seeing that glittering in her eyes more than just occassionally now.

Kate nodded. "Yeah. I'll show you."

"And if I get stuck, will Jack come and get me down?" She asked as well.

Kate stopped for a second, before carrying on with massaging the shampoo into her hair. She asked the question as if she was putting herself in the position of Kate, and Jack in the position of her father. Unable to say to the girl that he was her father in that way, she gave her a wicked smile.

"I'm not sure he'll be able to." She said, and her smile stopped Kora from frowning. "You see, Jack isn't very good at climbing trees." She whispered to her.

Kora laughed again, slapping her hands to the waters surface so that more bubbles went flying.

Kate laughed with her slightly. "Okay, head back." She instructed, and used a random cup filled with the bathwater to rinse the shampoo from her hair.

Soon, she was finished with Kora, and she had lifted her out of the bath, bundling her into one of the towels, and place her on her hip. She quickly stopped in the central room to get some of her clothes, and then took her into the bedroom to get her dressed. She brushed her curly hair with a brush that was probably more suitable for a baby's hair, but she managed to get all the tangles out.

Josh's bathtime was slightly different. For a start, it had taken him a few moments to actually accept that there were bubbles in the bath as well. Kate showed him how Kora had clapped her hands over the bubbles to make them spray everywhere, and he had latched on to the idea, until he too was laughing at seeing Kate with a large patch of bubbles on her head. It wasn't long before they had him bathed as well, and she again ran through the room with a towel-clad child in her arms.

When she emerged again, with a clean, nice smelling and dressed Josh, Kora had taken up her brothers place learning to read in Jack's lap. Kate smiled at the sight again, seeing the matching look of concentration on her face now, and went over to them. She listened to them reading and ran her hand first over the top of Jack's head, and then Kora's. She left them to their reading, and Sawyer beckoned her over with his finger.

She went and sat beside him, and he placed his book to one side. Josh climbed on to Jack's other knee, listening to the story again.

"Pretty little family picture they've got goin' on there." Sawyer commented, indicating to Jack and the twins. Kate simply nodded. "You sure you never had twins?" He checked again. He just couldn't believe that these children weren't theres.

Kate nodded. "Yeah, I'm sure." She insisted, even though the thought was crossing her mind somewhat.

"They're four, right?"

"Yeah."

"What were you doing five years ago?"

Five years ago?

Five years ago, she hadn't been on the run. She'd been blissfully unaware that Wayne was her real father.

Five years ago, Tom still trusted her, and there had been her, Tom and their friend Beth, probably the biggest Driveshaft fan in the world, and they would all meet up for drinks on a friday night.

Five years ago, she had been called to hospital when Beth had been involved in a sudden car accident.

Beth.

"Oh god."


	10. Just A Few Questions

Kate sat thinking to herself. Beth...how had she not remembered this sooner? Was she correct in what she was thinking? Part of her hoped that she was, but the bigger, dominant side of her mind begged it not to be true. It wasn't fair if it was true. She sat listening to Jack's voice, letting it calm her down as it had done the previous night. His voice always had a calming effect to it. But it wasn't working. She needed to tell him.

They weren't exactly sure what happened next, but they could remembering Henry and Tom entering the room. After that, there was Jack going limp, Sawyer getting to his feet, before also going limp, and then the children screamed, and then Kate forget everything else that happened.

The next time she was aware of herself, she knew that she had been drugged again. Her head was spinning, and her mind was doing overtime trying to figure out what had happened. Either way, she felt like death.

"Nice of you to finally join us, Kate."

Henry's voice. She could breathe easier this time because there was no gag in her mouth.

"Kate..."

"If I have to tell you one more time...!"

That was Jack, she realised, being told off for speaking. She heard him exhale after a thud, and wondered whether he had been punched. Raising her head somewhat, she looked around her.

They were in a white room again, but not their white room. This one was completely empty, except for the people that were in it, and the chairs that held them. Kate found herself between Jack and Sawyer, who were both bound in the same way she was, tied to the chair to prevent any movement. The kids...where were the kids?

Henry turned aside to Tom. "Why is it taking longer to wear off with her?" He asked him.

"She had a reaction to it last time." He said, refreshing Henry's mind to the reason why Jack had been allowed in sooner to see Kate. "It's probably messed with her system a bit."

"I told you to give her a lower dosage." Henry complained.

"We did."

Henry sighed heavily, clearly frustrated, before turning back to the others. He just caught the look that Jack was giving Kate, assuring her pale and tired face that things would be okay. She looked like she wasn't believing him so far.

"Now." Henry said, pulling a gun into his lap, holding it where they could see it. "While we've got your full attention, we're going to ask you some questions, and you're going to answer us. Is that clear?"

"Where are the kids?" Jack asked.

"They're being taken care of."

They all wondered whether that was good or bad.

"Is that clear?" Henry asked again.

"You sonofa-"

Henry waved the gun at Sawyer, and Sawyer backed down. Kate looked surprised. The last time she had seen him back down to the Others was when Tom had been holding her at gunpoint.

"Jack, what was your occupation before the plane crashed? And don't try to lie to me." Henry added threateningly, waving the gun once again.

Jack left a short pause, before replying. "I was a doctor." He answered. There was no point lying, Henry already knew that he was the doctor of the group.

"Good." Henry nodded. "James?"

"Didn't have a job." He shrugged, ignoring the pain in his shoulders when he did so.

"Oh no, that's right." Henry said, as if he suddenly remembered. "You preffered to screw people over for thier money, didn't you?" Sawyer just scowled at him whilst he turned to Kate. "Katherine, what about you?"

She didn't answer. She couldn't. As much as she was trying to so that nobody would get hurt, her brain was a little slow on commands.

"I remember now." Henry said, acting enlightened again. "The last job you had was cleaning dishes at your Mom's diner." Kate raised her head to look at him. "That's the only job you ever had. A diner girl." He smirked. "Give any of the customers a show?"

"Leave her alone!" Jack protested, uncomfortable with all of Henry's teasing being focused at Kate. Tom smacked him around the jaw for his interruption.

Henry was still focusing on Kate, leaning closer to her. "I'm going to ask you some questions about a man called Tom Brennan." Kate inhaled quickly, something that nobody missed. "I thought you'd remember him." He grinned, pulling something out of his pocket. "You want to tell me what this is?" He opened his hand to reveal Kate's toy plane sitting in his palm. She glared at him. "I thought not." He said.

"Where did you get that?" She asked, her voice finally coming back to her.

"That's not your concern." He told her, taunting her by flying it around her face.

"Give it back to me!" She demanded.

Henry watched it as he moved it infront of her face. "I always wondered why it meant so much to you." He revealed. "Of all the items on that backseat that you could have taken, you took this...why?" She didn't answer, but he didn't expect her too. She was too busy worrying about how he knew all of this. "Why not the tape? Why not the baseball cap? Why not one of your possessions? And then it came to me..." Henry said, deliberately holding it about two centimetres from her tear filled eyse. "It was his favourite...so it became yours."

Kate squirmed in her chair, trying to move away from him, but failing.

"You loved him, didn't you, Katie?" He said.

Her face glazed over with anger. "Don't call me that." She said, speaking slowly and menacingly.

"That was his special name for you, wasn't it? Katie. Little Katie Austen from Iowa with her army Daddy and her Mommy who got beat up by her boyfriend." He teased. "Little Katie who used to get pushed down the stairs by a man called Wayne, and would tell the doctors that she fell out of a tree."

Tears fell down Kate's cheeks as she bowed her head.

"Leave her alone!" Jack protested again, but this time, no one paid any attention to what he said.

Henry looked at Sawyer and Jack in turn. "Neither of you know about Tom, do you?" He questioned, but neither of them answered. "No. She's never told a soul about what she did to him."

Unable to hide her face away from them, Kate let it hand further, letting out a choked sob this time.

"Stop it! Can't you see what you're doing to her?" Jack yelled desperately, wanting nothing more than to take her into his arms.

"See, Katie here met Tom at school." Henry told them, again, ignoring Jack. "You were best friends, weren't you? They went everywhere together. And in August, 1989, they made a time capsule together, and buried it underneath a tree. Inside this tree, was a tape. A cassette, that they recorded together. This cassette."

Kate raised her head to see him holding the recorded cassette about two inches from her face. She recognised her child-like handwriting from the sticker strip on it. _Kate and Tom 1989. _"How did you-"

She didn't finish her sentence, because Henry stepped back, and crossed the room. To her horror, she saw that he was approaching a cassette player, which he inserted the tape into. He pressed play, and Kate hid her face again.

_"Is it on? I don't think it's on." _A male voice said, which must be a younger Tom.

_"It's on." _A female voice assured him. Kate's voice.

_Okay, this is Kate Austen and Tom Brennan and this is our dedication for our time capsule, here on August 15th 1989. Hey, give me that back!"_

_"Why are you putting this stupid plane in there?"_

_"Because it's cool, Katie. I got it whe I flew to Dallas by myself."_

_"That is cool. Just like this time capsule." _They both recognised the classic Kate sarcasm that came from the tape.

_"It'll be totally cool when we dig it up in like twenty years."_

There was a short pause. _"How do you know we'll be together?"_

_"Because we'll be married, and you'll be a mom, and we'll have nine kids." _Jack remembered when Kate had told him that all she had ever wanted to be when she grew up was a mother.

_"I don't think so. As soon as I get my liscense, we should just get in a car and drive. You know, run away."_

_"You always wanna run away, Katie."_

_"Yeah, you know why."_

Henry snapped off the tape, and the only sound that filled the room was Kate's sobbing.

"Some things never change, huh, Kate?" Henry commented, coming back over to his chair before Kate. "So, why don't you tell us the reason why?"

"No." She said, shaking her head through her crying.

"See, you're forgetting something." Henry pointed out to her. "You're forgetting what I'll do if you don't answer."

"I don't care what you do to me." She sobbed. "Just...I don't care."

Henry smirked his evil smile. "Once again, Kate, you think it's all about you." He looked at Jack. "It's your boyfriend here who's going to suffer if you don't tell us."

"No..." She whispered, her head snapping up.

Jack shook his head. "Don't listen to him, Kate."

"Don't hurt him." She pleaded with Henry.

"Don't tell them." Jack urged her.

"Could you do it, Kate?" Henry asked. "Could you watch him die like you watched Tom?"

"Please..."

"Kate, don't listen."

"It's always the same, isn't it? Everyone you love leaves you."

"Kate, look at me...don't listen to him." But she didn't look at him.

"They desert you..."

"No one's going to desert you, Kate."

"They _die_, don't they, Kate?"

"SHUT UP!" She suddenly screamed at Henry.

"Shall we add Jack to the list of casualties?" He asked her mockingly, enjoying the anger she was throwing at him.

"No..."

"It would be a shame to have to bury him too, wouldn't it?"

"Please..."

"Could you live with being the reason that he died?"

"Please..."

"Please, _what_?"

She swalled the lump in her throat. "Please, don't take him away from me."

Henry stood up. He had broken her, and that was enough. "I think we're done here." He announced.

"Yeah, I'd say so." Sawyer spoke up.

"Look what you've done to her!" Jack yelled at him. "What have you accomplished?"

"We've done what we needed to do." Henry nodded.

"So making her cry was on your list of things to do today?" Sawyer demanded.

Henry fixed him with a gaze. "Our goal isn't your concern, James."

-------------

Okay, I know I jumped away from the Beth thing. There's a reason for that, because they're not supposed to figure it out yet. Something else has to happen first, and it hasn't happened yet. In fact...two things, because I've just decided that something that has almost happened needs to happen as well. I'll warn you...from here, things take a very dark turn for a while. I'm sorry if this disturbs anyone, so I hope you don't stop reading because I love you all lip wobbles  
I haven't felt this nervous about posting chapters up since in Fallen From Grace when I made everyone think that Kaia had fallen from the rooftop. Lesson: Jack ALWAYS saves the day in my stories.


	11. I Still Love You

A while later, they were released back into their living quaters. Alex was there with the children, comforting them while they sniffled. They were thrown back in, and Alex left, saying a brief goodbye to the twins first.

Kate went straight to the wall and started to pounding her firsts against it, still sobbing from their interrogation. Jack followed her straight away, putting his hands on her shoulders.

"Kate...hey, Kate..."

"No." She protest, trying to shrug him off as she continued hitting the wall.

Seeing that they were clearly in a world of their own, Sawyer took the children into their room, not wanting them to see Kate in this state, and also because he knew that her and Jack needed this time alone. He'd love to be the one to make her feel better, but he knew that it was Jack's place to do that. He'd only ever succeeded in making her feel worse.

"Kate, you're going to hurt yourself." Jack prostested.

"They were going to hurt you!" She burst out, and Jack took her moment of stillness to gently take hold of her arms and turn her around. She fell straight into his arms.

"Hey, it's okay." He whispered to her as she cried.

"No, it's not okay." She said, shaking her head against him.

"Yes, it is." He nodded.

"How?" She asked wearily.

"You're still alive, and I'm still here too. I'm gonna look after you, Kate."

She looked up at him, shaking her head as tears coursed down her cheeks with a feirce determination. "You can't."

"I can, and nothing's going to stop me." He assured her, tucking her wild hair behind her ears.

"You'll only end up dead...like Tom." She said, letting out a sob on Tom's name.

He stroked her curls. "Kate, I don't know why Tom died, but I know that whatever the reason, it's not going to change anything."

"Tom died because he was helping me, okay!" She almost shouted. "He died because I needed him and he came through for me."

"That doesn't mean that I'm going to die too." He said soothingly.

"Knowing my streak of luck, you probably will."

Jack let out a sigh, pulling her close again. "Kate...nothing is going to stop me from heping you, and from loving you. Because I do love you, and I'm not going to let anything, or anyone hurt you. I can't help it. It's just...too much for me to see you like this. It killed me to hear you crying, knowing that I couldn't stop it, beause that's what I need to do. I need to stop it. I need to know that you're happy, and I want to be the one who makes sure you are."

She looked at him strangely. "You still love me, after everything Henry just said?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I love you."

"But...you can't. You shouldn't." She protested.

"I do." He assured her.

She shook her head at him. "I'll only end up hurting you, Jack."

"I'd rather be hurt by you than have someone else making me happy." He told her.

Again, she gave him that strange look. "Are you serious?"

"More serious than anything I've ever had to be serious about."

She placed herself back into his arms. "Save me, Jack." She begged of him in a tiny, broken whisper.

He held her tightly. "Don't worry, you're going to be okay." He promised her.

"No, not like that." She said. "My heart."

He smiled, even though she couldn't see it, and kissed the top of her head. "Yeah, that's what I meant."

-----------------

_How had it come to this? Jack wondered as he watched Michael and Walt sail away in the boat. They went past them, and the eyes of the two men connected. Jack felt nothing but betrayal from that man, when once there had been friendship. He had led them into an ambush. He had given them over to the Others. The others who insisted that they were the good guys._

_Jack felt anger boiling up in him as he remembered how it all started, the moment that Sawyer was shot in the back of the neck with whatever it was that shocked them all in the end. He had not seen it get Hurley, as he had ordered them to run from the moment Sawyer fell to the ground fighting whatever threw him there. He hadn't thought of his own life then, he had thought of Kate. He found his hand resting on her back as he pushed her towards the jungle, hoping that they could lose them._

_He should have known better than that, and as he heard her cry and fall to the ground, he reached for the gun at his side without a second thought, shooting blindly in the direction from which whatever it was that hit her came from. The one thing that he wanted safe most in the world and he hadn't been able to make sure of it. Part of him hated himself at that moment, perhaps shooting out as he sought redemption for not being able to protect her. After he heard a few more shots coming his way, he realised, however, that this was a useless battle for the moment._

_Turning back to Kate's body, he inwardly cursed at the sight of her twitching body, almost as if she was being slowly electrocuted, yet only small whimpers of pain escaped her, not loud groans as Sawyer had made when he was hit only moments before. He hoisted her collapsed body over his shoulders, around his neck, and started to run, wondering what was happening to Sawyer, what was happening to Hurley, what had happened to Michael - not that he cared for the latter. Then, one of those...things...hit him in the leg, and he staggered a little, but, determined to get Kate away from them, he carried on struggling to get away. But when another one hit...he was helpless against the pain that it gave him, and as darkness clouded his vision, he felt himself fall to the ground; his grip on Kate loosening. However, whilst he remembered seeing the grass close to his eyes, he couldn't remember hitting the ground, or rather, he hadn't felt it._

_Then the bags had gone on, and he could see nothing. The walked for a while, or rather, were half dragged to their destination. Jack was only aware that he was walking pitifully himself when he felt the terrain beneath him change from the uneven soil of the jungle to the echoing steadiness of the wood that was now beneath him. He knew somehow that the others were all there with him, but as he was forced to his knees somewhere along the wooden platform, he heard a sound of life from beside him, as another person was forced down._

_Kate. He heard her sharp intake of breath as her kneecaps slammed against the harshness of the wood. The sound of that contact told him that it had hurt her more than that of a quick draw of breath, but he knew that Kate was not one to show pain. After all, she was stubborn to the bone, just like him, and she wouldn't give the Others the satisfaction of seeing her suffer._

_He was mistaken, however. As the bags over their heads were removed, he looked at Kate out of the corner of his eye. She was only a few inches away from his side. Sawyer and then Hurley beyond her in the same positions, on their knees. All four of them were gagged with their hands bound behind their backs. He didn't need to look behind him to see that there were guns pointed on them. Michael had lied...there were many weapons here, and all were pointed at them._

_He saw the fear in Kate's eyes, but as soon as that man...Zeke, or rather...Tom...had walked up to them, the fear was covered up in a way that only she could. Then he realised why...she had been at their mercy before, only a few weeks ago. She had been pushed out of the jungle by them with a bag over her head, gagged and bound. She had been more vulnerable then, he remembered. He remembered her muffled sobbing against the bind in her mouth that tortured him inside. He remembered the desperate way in which her eyes at turned to him - not Locke or Sawyer - for help. She had only met his eyes throughout that evening, almost ashamed to look at anyone else._

_She tried to speak through her binds, and he silently begged her not to do anything stupid, as he didn't want to see her come to harm at their hands. His worst fear right then was not being killed, but seeing Kate getting hurt whilst he was bound and not able to help her. An African woman understood what she was trying to say about knowing that the beard was fake, and then he took it off._

_Michael was taken to the boat, and Jack looked around him, following them with his eyes. When they stood talking, he turned his head to see if the others were all right. Hurley seemed fine, just shaken. Sawyer looked like he was about to kill whichever one of them came closest to him. Kate met his eyes as soon as they fell upon her. She was showing no fear, just desperation. He knew that she was scared, and he didn't need to see it in her eyes to know that. They were all scared. These people had wanted them specifically for one reason or another, and he had a feeling that it wasn't a good reason. _

_He went to tell her that everything was going to be alright, but he got as far as "Kate-" when the barrell of a gun was pressed against his cheek. _

_"Don't speak to her." A voice told him._

_Jack looked like he was about to argue against it, but Kate shook her head slightly at him, telling him not to do it. He saw a fear in her eyes then, but why? Was she afraid of them hurting him? _

_Their gazes returned to Michael, who was now getting in to a boat. They watched as he was reunited with Walt, and then they started to leave. What was happening? After all of the business with the raft, everyone knew that Michael would go to any lengths to get him and Walt off of the island, but betray them to the Others for a boat that would probably last hardly at all on gas capacity, and that would probably be destroyed in the smallest storm? That was low._

_Hurley was let go...why bring Hurley if they were only going to let him go again? Surely the man had been through enough with losing Libby, but now..._

_Hurley looked to him for permission to leave. Jack nodded. If he had the change to get out of there, he should take it. The risk of not making it home straight away was better than the risk that was ahead of them. _

_"But what about my friends?" Hurley asked._

_Henry smiked. "Your friends are coming home with us."_

"Jack! Jack!"

It was Sawyer's voice that awoke him, and he snapped awake. Slowly, he became more aware of himself. Most nights, he had stayed awake until he simply couldn't anymore, and his mind was so desperate for rest that he didn't recall any dreams when he woke, yet the scene on the peir and in the jungle had been so real in his mind he was afraid that it was happening all over again.

He realised that Sawyer was standing over him, shaking him roughly. "What's wrong?" He asked her, hearing the desperation in his voice.

"It's the kids..." He started. "They've done something to them."


	12. Do Something

Chapter 12:

It had been Sawyer who had found out that something was wrong. Kate had been reading to Josh, much the same way that Jack had done to them before everything had kicked off, and Kora had been attempting to play cards again with Sawyer. Straight away, Kate had a feeling that something wasn't right. She wasn't sure exactly what made her think like that, but she knew instantly that there was something different about the twins. They were quieter, for sure.

"You all right there, Thumbelina?" Sawyer asked Kora as he watched her wince when she moved uncomfortably.

Kora just nodded, and looked down at her cards again. He could see her concentrating on trying to count the numbers on them as her lips moved with no sound emitting.

"Kora." He said to her, getting her attention again. She abandoned her counting, and looked up at him straight away. "Come here." He instructed her gently, speaking softly to her as she made her way over to him. She sat down in his lap, and looked up at him. "Now, what's the matter?" He asked her in a whisper, unheard by anyone except her.

"Nuffin'." She told him.

"C'mon kid…" He urged. "You can tell Uncle Sawyer." Josh had given him the nickname, when one morning Sawyer had been the one to give them their breakfast whilst Jack and Kate were still sleeping. 'Thank you, uncle Sawyer', was all he had said when Sawyer placed the bowl of cereal in front of him. Even though he wasn't a real uncle, it had made him feel kind of special all the same.

Kora looked away from him, ashamed to face him. "My back hurts." She whispered in a tiny voice. It was the sort of voice Sawyer remembered from his childhood, so long ago, when he had done something wrong, hurting himself in the process, and had gone to his mother. After his parents deaths, he had never gone to anyone with his pains again.

"What did you do to it?" He asked her, wondering why she was already acting like him with hiding her pain. Kate did that too, he remembered. Too many nights he had seen her sitting by the fire, silently stretching out the aches in her limbs from the consistent hikes. She never spoke a word of discomfort, and never asked, or accepted, any help.

"Nuffin." She repeated. "Just hurts."

Sawyer frowned a bit. "Turn around, let's have a look." He instructed her, and she looked at him warily. "I'm not gonna hurt ya, kiddo." He assured her, and she turned around in his lap.

Tentatively, he raised the back of her shirt. After all, if it was hurting her, he didn't want to cause her even more pain. It was clear straight away what was causing her to be in such discomfort, and his eyes widened.

"Holy Shit."

-----------------------

Sawyer swearing had kicked up a chain of fuss that had sent all of them into a state of panic. Kate had stopped reading, and her and Josh had looked over, seeing that Sawyer was looking, almost horrified, at the girls back. Kate had rushed over, leaving Josh sitting on the couch, and had seen what was causing him to be so shocked.

When she had seen, she had inhaled quickly and covered her mouth with her hands, fighting back an appalled look when Kora had looked over her shoulder to see their faces. Despite them trying to hide their reaction, the girl still saw how they were looking at her back, and started to cry.

"What have they done to her?" Kate muttered under her breath, as she got to her feet.

She didn't wait for an answer to her question as she lifted the crying child into her arms. She used one arm to hold Kora's head to her shoulder, stroking her dark hair, and held the other beneath her legs as she wrapped them around her waist. She dared not put her hands near her back, scared that even the slightest pressure would cause her pain.

"Go get Jack." Kate told Sawyer, and straight away he went into the room where she had left Jack sleeping a while ago.

In the meantime, Josh had started to cry as well, standing at Kate's feet. He always reacted to whatever Kora was worried about, always following her lead. If she was scared, he was scared. If she was hungry, he was hungry. If she was happy, he was happy. It was like he was unsure how to be his own person. Now, his sister was hurt, and he wasn't happy about it. He clung to Kate's legs whilst she stood, holding the crying Kora in her arms, hushing her and trying to soothe here.

Jack came into the room, his face still showing the remaining signs of sleep, but alert nonetheless. It was like a drunk person being told something tragic. Until you were in the situation, you never realised how quickly you could sober up. In this case, Jack had been pulled from a deep sleep, but was still on the ball when he knew that someone was hurt.

He took in the sight of Kate holding the pained child, whilst her brother screamed at Kate's feet. She tried to calm them both, but neither were responding.

"Kate." He said simply coming over to her, and he went to place a hand on Kora's back to soothe her, but Kate removed her hand from the child's head, grabbing his wrist and stopping him from touching her back.

"No." She instructed him. "They've hurt her there." She said.

Furrowing his eyebrows in concern, Jack gazed at the girl's back before reaching out to the hem of her shirt. It was a tiny white shirt that reminded him of Kate's, but Kate wasn't wearing one today. Everything about the twins reminded him of Kate, and he wondered whether that was why he was so angered that something had been done to hurt them.

"What's wrong?"

Kate responded by simply using one hand to lift Kora's shirt again. Jack swore under his breath, and Kate went back to soothing the screaming girl.

Her back was covered with bruises and scratches. Not one inch of unmarred skin could be seen, no wonder she was in so much pain. He looked away for his moment, unable to see such horror written on the back of a girl who seemed like a daughter to him now. "Who did this?" He asked bitterly, casting his gaze up to Kate.

"It must have been them." She said. "Her back was fine when I bathed her this morning."

"She's been shiftin' around awkwardly since we got back." Sawyer pointed out.

Jack ran his hand over his hair. "Shit, why didn't we notice sooner?" He cursed himself.

"No offence, Doc," Sawyer told him. "But you were a bit more concerned with Freckles and the sandman." Of course, he had come in, comforted Kate, and then had lay down for some sleep. He hadn't once checked that the children were okay. What was wrong with him?

"Sawyer, please!" Kate objected. It really wasn't the time for Jack and Sawyer to size up to each other.

"What? Just sayin'." He shrugged.

Kate turned back to Jack, her desperation growing as Kora's screaming continued. "Can you stop it hurting her, Jack?"

"I don't know." He said. "I can try, but it's pretty bad bruising. It's going to hurt no matter what I do."

"You have to do something!" She said, almost shouting at him. "We can't just leave her like this."

Now, Josh was screaming just as loudly, and Kate felt like she was being torn in two. She knew that she should be looking after Kora, who needed some form of medical attention, but she felt bad for leaving Josh scared and clinging to her whilst she could do nothing with the other twin in her arms. She looked do Sawyer.

"Sawyer, take Josh. I don't want him to see this." She told him, and he stepped forward without another word, taking the boy into his arms.

"Kor-" He sobbed in protest, but Sawyer whisked him into the twin's bedroom, so that he was away from his sister's screaming.

"She's okay, Shorty." Sawyer assured him. "They'll look after her."

Kate was still begging Jack. "Please, Jack, you have to do something. Anything!"

He knew that. He just didn't know what to do. He wondered whether this was why doctors weren't supposed to treat family. He just blanked. Nine years of medical training vanished before his eyes, and was replaced with a simple horror at what had been done to this innocent child.

"Jack!" She tried again, and he snapped into focus, all of his sense flowing back to him.

"Okay. Right, let's get her into the bathroom." He instructed.

Kate went without a compromising word, knowing that he would do whatever was needed. She sat down on the edge of the bath, holding the sobbing girl against her, whilst trying to painlessly remove the shirt from her back. By the time Jack had retrieved the first-aid kit from behind a tiny bathroom mirror, Kate had dropped the girl's shirt onto the linoleum floor and was trying to hold her without touching her back.

Jack crouched down so that he was level with Kora's back, and leaned close to her, stroking her hear. "Kora...Kora, can you hear me?" He asked her softly, in a voice that Kate recognised as his special voice for talking to children, slightly higher in pitch than usual, and a lot gentler.

"Jack-Jack." She said in choked sobs.

"Yeah, I'm here." He told her, stroking her hair down again. "Kate's here too. It's okay."

"Hurts." She whined.

"I know. I know, but I'm going to make it better, okay?" He told her.

"'Kay." She said weakly, and Kate felt her hand cling hold of her own shirt.

"I'm going to put some cream onto it, to make it better." He told her, remembering what he had learnt about children responding better to medical help when they knew exactly what was going to happen. "It's going to hurt for a minute, but after that it's not going to hurt anymore." She didn't seem to happy about it hurting. "Do you think you can be a big brave girl for me?" He asked her. Kora nodded her head against Kate's shoulder. "I thought so. Good girl." He told her.

He began to apply the cream, and Kora bit her lip against the sting. Kate felt her hand tighten on her shirt, and she looked down to see her little knuckles turning white with it. She began to whisper nothings into her ear, telling her that she was brave, and that she was okay now, to help her through it. Jack, meanwhile, made sure that the antiseptic cream, which would numb the area it was applied to, covered all on the marks on the child's back. All the while, Kora continued crying, yet she never screamed.

Eventually, Jack put the cap back on the cream, and as he had stopped, Kate gently rocked Kora against her.

"It's all done now, sweetie." She assured her. "It's finished now."

Jack, the cream set aside, joined Kate in comforting the still crying child. "Good girl, Kora. You done great."

Kate looked up at Jack. "Is she going to be all right?" She asked, concern written all over her.

He nodded. "She's gonna be fine, as long as we keep her off her back."

That was easier said than done. "How do we do that?" Kate asked. "She nearly fell out of the bed last night with her fidgeting, and the night before she ended up with her head and pillow on the other end of the bed." She pointed out to him.

"We'll bring her in with us." Jack decided.

"Josh won't sleep if she's not there." She reminded him, but he had a plan for that as well.

"Then we'll have him in too."

Kate nodded, knowing that she would sleep easier after this if she knew that the children were in the same room as her, especially in the same bed. Kora's sobbing was reducing to whimpers as she gradually cried herself to sleep. Kate sighed heavily, the panic of the moment deserting her now, and she rested her head lightly atop of Kora's.

Jack noticed the look in her eyes, and he had seen it too many times for his comfort. "You okay?" He asked her, his hand coming to rest on the top of her arm.

Kate didn't even try to cover it up, and shook her head. "They're just kids." She said sadly.

"I know." He agreed.

"They don't deserve any of this, Jack. They're only four years old. They should be out making friends, playing in the park, getting ready for school, wearing nice clothes, and being with a family that loves them. Not this. No child deserves this." She got chocked up, the first signs of tears coming to her eyes. "I never thought I'd say this, but they've had a worse childhood than me, and they're only four." She admitted.

Jack stroked his hand up her arm to try and reassure her. "Kate, they will have that. They will. Remember? Alex said we're taking them home."

"That's not the point, Jack, they should already have it." She pointed out to him.

He knew she was right, but they needed to stay positive. "We'll do the best we can."

"What about their parents?" Kate asked.

He shrugged. "Everyone has parents, Kate. It's just a matter of finding them."

She thought back to that morning, and what she had tried to tell Jack before. "What if they had already found them?" She suggested.

He frowned at her. "What are you saying?"

She shrugged. "I know this is a bit farfetched, but I had this friend called Beth and-"

"Hey, Doc. She okay?"

Sawyer's voice cut her off, and she realised that once again, she had lost her chance to try and talk to Jack about this. Jack turned to Sawyer.

"Yeah, she's gonna be okay." He nodded to him.

Sawyer nodded in return. "Listen, I uh, I checked Josh out, but he's okay." He said. "No marks or anything. He's asleep."

"That's good." Jack said, still nodding.

"I don't know what the hell happened with this, but I know that whichever one of them that did that, they ain't gettin' past me without wishin' they were dead." Sawyer said bitterly. Jack wanted to disagree with him, but for once, he agreed with Sawyer's violent motives.

Sawyer left, and Jack turned back to Kate. "What were you saying?"

Realising that she couldn't talk about this now, she covered it up. "Um...nothing. Don't worry about it."

"No, it sounded important. What was it?" He pried.

She shook her head, a fake smile. "It's a silly idea, it doesn't matter." She brushed off.

"It's okay, you can tell me." He assured her, but she had none of it.

"I was just panicking in the moment." She assured him. "I'm past it now."

He realised that he wasn't going to get anything out of her unless she was ready to talk about it, and simply nodded. "Okay."

--------------------------------

Looking over the monitor screen at the tiny bathroom, Henry frowned at the pair, the child between them. They had clearly heard what words had been exchanged, and for him, they weren't good. He remained in silence, thinking it over, trying to come to a logical plan, but was interrupted.

"This isn't going as well as you'd hoped, is it?"

He turned his head, looking briefly at Juliet, who stood beside him, before turning back to the monitors. "It's too early for them to be figuring this out." He muttered, watching closely as no words were exchanged, but Jack and Kate continued to embrace, careful of the child.

"Shall we tell them?"

"No." He answered quickly, but repeated it again, softer this time. "No."

"Then what shall we do?"

He couldn't answer her, because he didn't have an answer. He wasn't sure what to do. He needed time to think about it, but he knew that he didn't have time, and that this whole project could collapse based on the decision he made right now.

In his silence, Juliet continued. "If we leave them, she'll figure it out-"

"I KNOW." He said sharply, whipping round to face her, but she made no movement nor flinch at his outburst, she was used to them now. "I know." He repeated.

"Then what shall we do?" She asked again.

Henry sighed, turning back to the monitors and watching as Jack and Kate walked out of the frame before walking into the frame that held the living-room area, to the upper right of the bathroom screen.

"Go get Beth, tell her it's time." He instructed.

Juliet nodded obediently, and left the room but he called her back.

"Juliet." She turned wordlessly. "Not a word to your sister. If I find out you've been to see her-"

"Not a word." She repeated, and left the room.


	13. The Bargain

Later that evening, Jack lie in the bedroom, flat on his back. He gazed up at the ceiling, but wasn't really seeing it. What was really on his mind was the events of that afternoon. Kora had exhausted herself with all her screaming and kicking up a fuss, and was still sleeping now, having slept right through an opportunity to eat that night. Josh had woken up, and had eaten a little, but not his usual amount without his sister there. Kora was lying on her front ontop of his chest. Jack had his arms holding her waist so that there was no chance of her rolling off onto her back. They had been lying like that since they had left the bedroom, and were still like that when Kate entered with Josh in her arms. His tiny cheek was pressed against Kate's shoulder as she held him.

"He asleep again?" Jack asked, watching her as she crossed the room.

"Out like a light." She replied softly.

She lay down beside him, placing Josh between them, who snuggled up contently snug between the pair of them in his sleep before sighing. Jack turned his head, placing a kiss to Kate's lips gently. "Kids are strange, aren't they?" He realised. "They know straight away whether someone can be trusted or not."

She nodded. "They always know when there's something wrong." She said, watching how protectively Jack held Kora against him.

"They must have felt like that for their entire life." Jack thought sadly, and turned his head to fully face Kate, and seeing the far away look in her eyes. "What are you thinking about?" He asked her.

"Huh?"

"You were a million miles away." He said, but smiled at her. "It's just a nice change to see you so far away with a smile instead of that look you usually get."

"I was just thinking how cute you look like that." She thought aloud.

"Like what?"

"With the twins." She said. "You're just the kind of man that seems to suit the fatherhood image."

He shook his head with a sad laugh. "Fate didn't bless me in that way." He told her.

"I thought you didn't believe in fate?" She questioned playfully.

"Fate is what you call it when you don't know the name of the person screwing you over. But as soon as I know their name, I'll stop believing." He told her.

"Even if fate brings you something good?" She asked, testing his belief.

"Yeah, because then I'll have a reality that's worth living for." He said with a weak smile.

"This is still reality, Jack." She reminded him, as if they needed something other than that afternoon to show them how real this all was.

"Yeah, but it's not a reality to live for." He contradicted.

"Then what do you live for?" She asked.

He sighed, thinking it over. "I used to live for working...for saving lives, and keeping a reputation as a gifted young surgeon." But that was the life he had long abandoned. "Now, I live for loving you, and most importantly, getting you and these kids away from this place."

She smiled, and rested her head against his shoulder, so that all four of them were snug together comfortably. "Sounds like a nice reality." She mused.

"Have I told you that I loved you today?" He asked her.

She nodded. "Yeah, but once more won't hurt."

He gave her a smile. "I love you."

"I love you too."

He turned his head, kissing her ever so gently, but still swirling her emotions and leaving her breathless. After their lips parted with content sighs escaping them, Kate returned her head to his shoulder, and he placed his atop of hers. Her hand drifted south, and smoothed Josh's dark hair gently.

"You know what's really weird?" She said after a moment of silence. "This really feels like a real family."

"I know what you mean." Jack agreed. "It feels...right."

She nodded. "Maybe this is fate."

He agreed with her again. "We're definatly being screwed over, but we're getting something out of it, it at least."

"We've still got each other." She reminded him, pressing her lips to his shoulder.

"We always will have." He assured her, removing one hand carefully from Kora to join with Kate's. "No matter what happens, we'll always find our way back to each other."

Kate smiled, knowing that he meant it, but her attention was once again drawn to the children. "We've only been here a few days, but I really feel attached to them." She admitted. "I can't bear the thought of anything happening to them. I just want to see them smiling all the time."

Jack smiled to himself, remembering something good that had happened that day. "Josh read a word on his own earlier." He told her. "When you were bathing Kora. It was the word 'happy'."

"Ironic." Kate commented, but smiling.

"I know, but I just felt so...proud when he did that." He said. "I mean, I've seen paralysed people walk because of my work, but I've never felt more proud than when he did that this morning."

Kate looked up at him, turning her head slightly, and saw the proud smile that was on his lips. "You're turning into a father." She whispered to him.

"At least I'm not turning into my father."

--------------------------------

It wasn't long before Juliet returned to the surveillence room, with Beth in tow, as requested. The auburn haired woman stepped into the room without the obedience that Juliet had. It was clear that she had little respect for the authority that Henry showed over them.

"You rang?" She asked irratently as Juliet silently left the room after delivering Beth.

Henry turned away from where he had been watching the screens, and stepped in front of them, sheilding them from Beth's view. "Your sarcasm hasn't aged along with you, I see." He commented.

She faked a look of shock. "Don't you know it's rude to speak about a woman's age." She said, acting offended. "I'm still younger than you."

"We don't have time for snappy comments, Beth." Henry scolded.

She replied by raising an eyebrow. "Last I heard we had time up to our ears."

"Has Juliet explained the situation to you?"

Beth laughed at the thought. "Why would she? She's never spoken to me before."

"They're here." He explained simply.

Now he had her attention. "Who, the mainland?" She questioned.

He gave her a stern gaze. "You know that kind of contact is forbidden." He reminded her. "We cannot allow them to come here."

Beth nodded. "Then who?" She asked.

Henry turned back to the screens, selecting one that was currently blank, and pressing a button underneath which started playing a video clip of a young, dark haired woman bathing a smaller, dark haired girl. The date was matched for that morning, and Beth leaned close to the screen to make sure her eyes weren't playing tricks on her.

"Well, of all the gin joints...Katie Austen." She almost laughed.

"None other." Henry confirmed.

She still kept her eyes trained on the screen, unable to believe that the girl she had grown up with was there. "I never thought in a million years you would get her to come here."

Henry smirked. "We have our methods."

Beth straighted up, paying no attention to any of the other screens. "So, you're sending the kids home with her, as you promised?" She asked, getting down to the 'business' side of the matter.

"Not yet." Henry told her, attracting a frown. "They're not allowed to leave until they've successfully bonded and know the truth."

"They?"

"We tracked the father too." He nodded. "He was on the same air flight that crashed here."

Beth frowned. "Sarah's ex?" Henry nodded. "Does she know that he's here?"

"No."

"When are you telling her then?" She asked.

Henry frowned at her. "I don't have to answer to you, Beth."

Realisation dawned on her. "Oh, you're not going to tell her anything, are you?"

"She doesn't need to know." Henry decided.

"She deserved to know as much as I do. She did, after all, arrange 50 of this project." Beth pointed out, much to Henry's annoyance.

"If it wasn't for you-"

"Granted, I had the hardest job, but she still got the goods, you can't deny that."

Henry leaned against the monitors, and bit back a groan. Beth was so hard to work with. "I'll tell her when the occassion calls for it."

"The occassion never calls for it, with you."

He slowly rounded on her. "I'm going to pretend you didn't just criticize me."

She nodded. "You go ahead and do that."

"Just because your time here is nearly over, that gives you no authority." He told her.

"Of course not, that would be rude." She adknowledged, but knew that she was testing her limits.

Getting to the matter that actually needed discussing, he took one look at the screens, and showed her the image of Jack and Kate sharing the bed with the two children, all of them asleep now. Beth watched with a small smile on her face as the young boy shifted slight, and curled closer to Kate, who wrapped her arms around him, completely unaware they were being closely watched.

"They've fallen for each other, haven't they?" She realised from watching them.

Henry nodded. "We need you to talk to them."

She straightened up again, looking at him shocked. "Excuse me?"

"Talking." He said simply. "With them."

She shook her head, backing away. "No. I can't do that."

"It wasn't a question."

"She thinks I'm dead!"

"There's no other way."

"There's a dozen other ways." She compromised, but Henry shook his head.

"She's already starting to work it out." Henry said, earning another disbeliving look from Beth. "Ford started to work her mind around what she was doing five years ago, and she mentioned your name to Shephard earlier before Ford interrupted them."

"That doesn't mean she knows." Beth said hastily.

"One of the first things they all realised was how alike Kora-Leigh was to Katherine."

Beth forgot about the matter at hand, and raised her eyebrow. "She'll hate you for calling her that."

"Which one?" Both of them hated to be called by their full names, another trait they shared.

"Both of them. Katie, mainly."

Henry laughed. "She already hates me."

Beth frowned. "You played her the tape, didn't you?" Henry said nothing, but didn't need to. Beth's hands flew to her face. "You bastard! When I got that for you I did it on the grounds that you weren't to play it to her."

"It was that tape which got her into this mess in the first place." He contradicted her.

"She already balmes herself for Tom's death. You don't have to rub it in!"

"This is not your decision to make, Beth." He snapped at her. "Now, if this happens one more time, you will talk to them."

"No."

"You're the one with the explaining to do."

She looked at him with a dark glare. "I'll do it. On one condition."

"I can't garantee it." He told her, but she said it anyway.

"I'll talk to them, but I won't do it alone. Sarah talks too."

Henry laughed at her request. "She's held her end of the bargain."

"If that's so, why is she still here?" He had no answer for that. "This isn't about the bargain. We started this, we'll finish this. Together."

Henry smirked. "Why the sudden partnership?"

"It's called teamwork. Not that you'd know what that means Mr. Linus."

He turned on her again, trying his best to stay calm. "You will go back to your quaters. When you are needed, we will send for you and Sarah. You will talk, make no mistake about that." He finalised.

"Katie won't listen." She said, as she left the room, shutting the steel door behind her.

Henry turned back to the screen, watching the four of them again. "Oh, she'll listen alright."


	14. Brave Girl

**Don't worry guys, I hadn't forgotten about this one! I just knew that I'd scripted out my chapter plans and couldn't find the name I'd saved it under, so I had to wait until I found it!**

Chapter 14

Kate's eyes slowly fluttered open as she awoke from her sleep. At first, she felt extremely groggy, as if she still needed more sleep, but when, as she did every morning now, she turned to place her hand against the cool sand of the beach, she found that her hand landed on Jack's hip instead. Instantly, the reality settled in, just like every morning, and whilst she was always filled with dread at the imagination that soard with what horrors they might face that day, the fact that her hand always met Jack's warm body rather than the cool grains of sand was enough to give her some hope.

Jack was still in the exacty same position as he had fallen asleep in, on his back, with Kora lying on her front as he held her to his chest. She always thought that the intuition of a sleeping person was amazing when children were near. You could be the most active sleeper in the world, tossing and turning all night, but as soon as your body was aware of a child sleeping beside you, you would never move a muscle.

Jack was still sleeping, as was Josh, still lying between them. Kora was awake, however, but she hadn't moved out of the position. Her cheek was still comfortably rested on Jack's chest as her arms fell on either side of him. Kate reached out and stroked her cheek softly, before reaching over Josh and taking her hand in her own.

"Hey there, brave girl." She whispered with a smile.

"Hi." Kora whispered back to her.

"Does your back hurt?" Kate asked worriedly, but Kora shook her head against Jack. "That's good honey." She smiled. "Do you hurt anywhere else?" Kora nodded this time, and dread filled Kate with the panic that she had been hurt somewhere else and in the moment, they had missed it. "Can you tell me where?" She asked warily.

"My tummy hurts, 'cause I'm hungry." Kora told her in a loud whisper.

Kate let out a breath she hadn't even been sure she was holding at that, but she mentally scolded herself when she realised that Kora hadn't had a chance to eat the night before. No wonder she was hungry. She gave the girl a small smile though. "When Jack and Josh wake up, we'll go have some breakfast." She told her.

"Was I brave yesterday?" Kora asked.

Kate nodded firmly. "You were really brave, a lot braver than I would have been." Of course, she could honestly say that and mean it. When she was Kora's age, and Wayne had beaten her, she had cried for hours on end, and usually worked herself into a hysterical state where she would end up vomitting. Naturally, this didn't help the matter, for her or Wayne, but it wasn't until she was seven years old that she became a silent victim.

"Braver than you?" She asked quietly, as if she wasn't sure that someone could be braver than Kate.

Kate nodded. "Yeah, a lot braver."

Kora was silent for a moment, watching Kate with her matching emerald eyes. "I'm sorry I made you scared." She muttered, holding on tighter to her hand.

Kate smiled, gripping her hand tighter in return. "Hey, you don't need to be sorry, honey." She assured her.

"But I made you worry."

"I was scared, but you don't need to be sorry for that, okay?" Kora nodded. "You have nothing to be sorry for. It wasn't your fault."

"Yes, it was."

Kate shook her head, appauled at what had been drummed into their heads. "No, it wasn't." She whispered firmly.

"But I was bad." Kora recognised. "I bit him."

She frowned. "Who?"

"One of the nasty men." Kora told her. "He was being nasty to Josh so I told him 'no' and he was gonna hit me so I bit his hand."

Kate's gaze softened to something of sympathy. "Oh, Kora-"

"I'm sorry." She repeated.

"Hey, it's okay."

"I didn't want them to hurt us no more." She whispered in a tiny, fragile voice which made Kate want to kill to get them out of there.

However, instead of taking the murderous approach, she took the better path. "They're not going to, you know why?" Kora shok her head. "Because me and Jack are here now, and we're going to look after you. We're not going to let them do anything to you ever again."

"Promise?"

"I promise." Kate nodded.

Kora nodded along with her. "Kate, are you my Mommy?"

Kate bit her lip, all of her silent battles within her mind surfacing with the question of a four year old girl. "I don't know, sweetie. I don't know." At first, she had been adament that they weren't related, but now, with all that was running through her mind, she wasn't sure."

"When you do know, will you tell me?"

Kate nodded. "Yeah, I will."

"I'd like it if you were my mommy." Kora revealed. "I don't think I want my mommy if she isn't like you."

"No?" Kate questioned, her heart swelling as the little girl revealed that thought.

"I think you're what a mommy's meant to be like."

"What does a mommy have to be like?" Kate asked, unsure what it was she was doing to make Kora put so much faith in her.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. Just you." She decided. "I think Josh would like you being our mommy as well."

"Yeah..." Kate sighed.

"And then Jack could be our daddy." Kora continued her plan.

"I guess so." Kate agreed, after all, her and Jack were together now.

"Yeah, 'cause he's like a daddy, and you and him look like a mommy and daddy together." Kora said, bringing a smile to Kate's lips.

At this moment, Jack chose to wake up, feeling aware of himself a lot quicker than Kate had done. He smiled at Kate, leaning to the side to reach her lips with his. "Hey." Kate whispered to him.

"Hey, beautiful." He smiled to her, before turning to Kora. "How's the little trooper this morning, feeling better?" He asked her.

Kora nodded. "Yeah, it don't hurt much no more."

Jack smiled, kissing her forehead. "That's much better." He caught the look in Kate's eye as she pondered Kora's final words to her a moment ago. "You okay?"

She smiled, nodding. "Never better."

Jack grinned back at her, lifting Kora into his arms and off of the bed. "What do you say we go get some breakfast?"

"Yeah!" Kora nodded.

Kate watched as Jack took Kora out of the room, and she remained on the bed with the still sleeping figure of Josh curled against her body. She sighed deeply, as a moment of her past came back to her.

_"Please, Beth, just tell me." She begged._

_"It's nothing." Beth replied in a monotonous tone._

_Kate, however, who had known Beth for her whole life, knew differently. "You've barely spoken in the past hour." She pointed out. "I've known you long enough to know that something's wrong. Beth, I can't help you if I dont know what's going on."_

_Beth turned to Kate, and for a moment, Kate saw fear in her friend's eyes. "You can't fix this, Katie. No one can."_

_"Can't we try?" Kate asked. "You can tell me, Beth."_

_A minute passed. Then another. Then another. "It's Jason." Beth finally answered._

_Kate had a sneaking suspicion that Beth's husband might have something to do with this. "What about him?" She asked stiffly._

_"He wants to have kids, Katie."_

_Kate suddenly looked alarmed. "Beth, we talked about this...you were going to tell him-"_

_"I couldn't." She cut off._

_"Beth!"_

_"I can't do this, Katie!" Beth broke down, finally letting herself have some emotion flow into her voice. "I'm twenty three years old, and I've been married for five years already. All my life I've either been satisfying my husband, or my parents."_

_Kate gave her a determined stare. "How about satisfying yourself for a change?" She suggested._

_Beth, however, shook her head. "I don't know how to be anything else than what I am now." She explained._

_"Then you need to get away from him!" Kate practically exploded with the comment._

_"It's not that simple, Katie." Beth replied in a tiny voice._

_"Yes, it is."_

_"I'm not you, okay! I can't just jump into a car and run away." Beth said back to her, her voice becoming louder._

_Kate sighed, running her hands through her hair. "Beth, this isn't like hiding out from our parents when we'd broken the window, okay? This is serious. Jason is crazy-"_

_"-Or am I crazy for staying with him?" Beth challenged her._

_Kate bit her lip. "Please, Beth, don't do this. You deserve better."_

_"Do I?" She scoffed._

_"Of course you do! Look, you don't have to do this alone." Kate planned. "I'll come with you, and-"_

_"And what?" Beth asked. "I'll get away from Jason whilst you get away from Wayne?"_

_"We can help each other, Beth." Kate explained to her, taking her hands in her own. "We can do this, together."_

_Beth released Kate's hands, letting them drop as she shook her head. "We're not Thelma and Louise, Katie."_

_Kate looked at her, and suddenly realised what was going on. "You've already agreed, haven't you?" She realised. "You've told him you want to have children."_

_"Kate-"_

_"Beth, you said yourself he's too violent."_

_Beth shrugged. "Maybe a child would change him." She suggested._

_Kate, though, had experienced first hand what happened when men were made excuses for. "Like my mom said when she brought Wayne home?"_

_Beth fixed her with a cold stare. "Don't compare Jason to Wayne." She warned. "We both know that he's not as bad as him."_

_"He will be if you give him half a chance." Kate warned her in return. "Please, Beth, if you do nothing else for me in our entire lives, don't do this to yourself."_

_Beth shook her head, getting to her feet. "I'm sorry, Katie."_

_"No, Beth-"_

_"You'll understand one day." She said, as she turned on her heal, and left the diner, and Kate, behind her._

Jack stood in the doorway of the bedroom, seeing Kate stroking Josh's hair with a far off look in her eyes. He knew that look, and that she was thinking of something, and that something was probably the girl he had heard her mention a few times now. Beth. He suddently wanted to know who Beth was. He knew that he couldn't ask her, because it was something she needed to explain in her own time, but a part of him plagued him with thoughts.

He watched her with Josh, noticing the casual and simply way in which her hand glided over his dark hair. Where her own hair fell across her shoulder, it blended with his, and fused with the exact same colour. She had a soft expression as well, one of content, one of maternal protection. She looked so beautiful in such a motherly pose, giving him such attention.

"Hey." Kate said, glancing up to see Jack standing with his eyes on her.

"Hey." He replied, giving her a smile in return. "I was gonna say that breakfast is ready when you both want some."

Kate returned her attention to Josh. "I'm okay, thank you." She whispered.

Jack gave her a concerned glance. "You need to eat, Kate."

"I will." She said, looking back at him with a reassuring smile. "I'll just wait for Josh to wake up, and I'll eat with him."

Jack locked her gaze for a moment, but then nodded. "Okay." He accepted, before going back to the other room with Sawyer and Kora.


	15. Free To Go

Chapter 15:

Beth ducked behind a tree brance, wearily watching from her hidden spot as Pickett crossed across in front of her. She wasn't avoiding him. She'd never had a problem with Danny, or his wife, Colleen. In fact, she got on quite well with the Picketts. She just knew how much he spoke to Henry, and she wasn't planning on getting caught with her expedition.

Juliet might have been told to stay away from her sister, but she hadn't. She didn't have any of the bitter family problems that harvested between the pair of blonde's and she had no intention of getting involved with them. She walked up to the house, one that, when she first came here, had seemed like a palace in comparison to the house she had grown up in, back in Iowa.

The door wasn't locked, but she knocked on it as she pushed it open. "Anyone here?" She called out.

"Yeah." Came the replying call from another room. "That you, Beth?"

"Yeah, it's me." She called back.

"I'm in the kitchen!"

Beth closed the door behind her, and walked through the living room until she came to the kitchen. The door was ajar slightly, so that she only had to push it open a little to get a nice aroma of whatever it was that Sarah was cooking.

"Mmm...smells nice." She complimented, her eyes closed as she inhaled the smell.

"Thanks." Sarah grinned, wipping her hands on the top of her jeans. "I've got it down to a T now, I think." She said proudly.

Beth laughed lightly, coming fully into the kitchen. "It's only mac and cheese." She reminded her friend.

Sarah pointed a finger at her. "It's never 'only' mac and cheese. It takes a long time to prepare and cook, you know."

"Only because you have to double back the mistakes." They both laughed, and Beth pulled herself up to sit on the counter of the breakfast bar. "I'll never understand how you can cook the best dinners I've ever had, but not something as simple as mac and cheese."

"Well, you know...you can't have everything." Sarah said lightly, adjusting the heat setting on the stove before turning and leaning back against the counter to face Beth.

"Otherwise I'd be here eating all your meals." Beth smirked.

Sarah laughed. "Even Nathan doesn't eat all my meals."

"He's your husband though!"

"That doesn't mean that he has to eat everything I cook." Sarah reminded her.

"I guess." She nodded. "Perhaps you should start cooking when he's actually here." She suggested, seeing as Sarah was preparing dinner, and Nathan wasn't in sight. In fact, she hadn't seen Nathan that day at all. Usually she saw everyone at least once.

"That's not a lot, recently." Sarah said quietly.

"No?"

"He keeps disappearing with Tom and Danny every morning, and coming back late every night." She told Beth, who immediately started to tease.

"Ooo...maybe he's got himself some boyfriends!" She said in a sing-song voice.

"Ha ha." Sarah laughed sarcastically, as she threw a tea towel at Beth. "Is anything going on?" She asked, more seriously.

"Like what?" Beth asked, catching the tea towel and putting it into the counter beside her.

"Like anything." Sarah shrugged. "Things have been crazy recently. Goodwin and Ethan are dead. They brought Walt here. They took Walt away..."

Beth frowned, snapping her head up. "Walt's gone?" She questioned.

"You didn't know?"

"When did he go?" Beth asked.

"Just over a week ago." Sarah told her. "Apparently they traded him in for three other people. They sent him and his father on a compass bearing that would help them find rescue."

Beth bit her lip. "Any idea who they traded for?"

Sarah smirked at her. "Lying doesn't suit you, Beth."

Beth broke into a grin. "That easy, huh?"

"Yeah." Sarah nodded. "So, you wanna tell me what's going on?"

Beth wondered whether she should tell her. It was going to piss Henry off. It was going to piss Juliet off. It was probably going to piss everyone off, maybe even Sarah herself. But the fact that it was going to piss Henry off made her ultimately choose to tell her.

"Let's just say that our end of the experiment is almost over." She said simply, leaning back on her arms, as her hands gripped the underside of the counter.

Sarah was silent for a while, as eventually, she remembered that she wasn't here for no apparent reason. She'd had a reason to be here, along with Beth. There was a reason why she'd been given this nice home, and met her husband, and live a peaceful life.

"They found the Austen girl?" She questioned. "Your friend?"

"The plane that crashed here a while ago had her on it." Beth revealed. "I think He had something to do with it." She added as an afterthought.

Sarah snorted. "Of course He had something to do with it. He's been trying to get her here ever since the twins started getting on his nerves."

"Katie didn't come alone." Beth told her. "She was only one of the three they traded for."

"Who are the other two?" Sarah asked.

By now, Beth hoped that a lightswitch might have gone off in Sarah's head, so that she would know what was happening without her saying. "Two men." She answered. "They've both got feelings for her. They were all seperated at first, but Katie got sick, she needed a doctor. She they gave her the doctor, and the next day, they all got thrown in together."

"A doctor..." Sarah said slowly. "You mean...Jack's here too?"

Bingo.

"Wouldn't it be ironic..." Beth told her. "...The two people we needed, and they ended up crashing here and falling in love anyway."

Sarah bit back the lump in her throat. There's shouldn't be one there. "He's fallen in love with her?" She asked awkwardly.

"I wouldn't get so worked up about it if I were you, Sarah." Beth reassured her. "You were only with him for this plan in the first place. Hell, you were still with Nathan at the time!" She reminded her.

"I know." She said, composing herself once more. "How did you find out all of this?"

"Just a little chat with your sister."

Sarah's face darkened. "Oh. So she's in on this too?"

"C'mon, she's not that bad." Beth reasoned. Sarah fixed her with a stare. "Okay, maybe she is. Rumour had it that she spent a lot of time watching in on Jackie boy. Maybe we should tell Katie, she might scratch her eyes out."

Sarah raised an eyebrow at her. "Bring me her eyes in the jar afterwards."

"Ooo...someone woke up on the bitchy side of the bed." Beth giggled.

"Can we not talk about her, please?" Sarah said irritantly.

"Sure." Beth said brightly. "Oh, by the way, you can't mention this to anyone."

Sarah eyed her suspiciously. "Why not?"

"If they know that you know, my neck's on the line." She explained. "No one's been told to tell you anything. I think they wanted to spring it on you."

"What, that Jack's here?"

"No, not that." Beth said, shaking her head. "They want us to talk to them."

"What?" Sarah asked, her hand slipping on the counter so that she almost whacked her elbow on the edge.

"We're going to explain exactly what happened before the twins were born, before they all leave us."

"Us? Wht, has He got a lazy streak now?" Sarah asked, and Beth could tell that she was getting more irritated by the situation by the minute.

"Apparently it's us that have got the explaining to do." Beth shrugged.

"Shit." Sarah swore under her breath. "That wasn't part of the plan."

"Neither was having feelings for Jack, but it still happened." Sarah frowned at Beth's comment, but Beth's determined stare didn't falter. "I had to betray someone I care about as well, remember? The only problem was that I had cared about her since I was four years old when I had to change her life. I had to fake my death, you only had to get a divorce."

Sarah sighed, realising that Beth was right. "I know."

Beth suddenly brightened again. "Well, I'd love to stay for mac and cheese, but I've got a lovely leg of lamb waiting for me." She said, hopping down from the counter.

"Dinner with Amelia again?" Sarah laughed.

"Sure thing." She nodded. "See ya!"

"Bye." Sarah said, going back to her cooking as the kitchen fell back into silence once more.

--------------------------------------------------

The door opened with a bang during breakfast, sending Jack and Sawyer immediately to their feet. Kate stayed in her seat, but whipped around quickly, and felt the hands of the two children grasp her own for comfort. She squeezed them back, as Sawyer and Jack advanced towards the door, only to be restrained as men flooded into the room.

They struggled against the men, but were not harmed in their persuit, and Henry stepped into the room. "Relax, I'm here with good news." He assured them, his conventional evil smile crossing his scarred face.

"What did you do to Kora?" Jack demanded fiercly.

"She pushed her boundaries and needed to be punished." Henry explained calmly.

"What you did wasn't punishment, that was abuse." He spat back at Henry.

Henry simply laughed. "What are you going to do, Jack, right the helpline? Call the cops?" He stopped laughing, but was still smiling. "You're a doctor, I'm sure you took care of her."

"You're sick." Sawyer said, shaking his head.

"And you're free to leave." Henry said, turning to face Sawyer.

Sawyer stopped struggling. "You what?"

"You heard me, James." Henry nodded. "You're free to go."

Sawyer looked from Henry to Jack, and then over his shoulder to Kate. "And the rest of us?" He asked, actually impressing Jack by thinking of people other than himself for once.

"Their time with us isn't over yet." Henry explained.

"Why the hell did you want me here in the first place?" Sawyer asked. He hadn't been used for anything, other than a few interrogations, through which the Others learnt nothing of him, or anything else.

"We needed you and Jack, to see who was needed." Henry explained, all three of the captives internally screaming to know what they were needed for. "You have no requirement to be here now. Tomorrow morning, we shall return and you'll be escorted back to the line."

"What line?" Sawyer asked ridiculously.

"The line that you're not going to cross." Henry said. "You're going to return to your camp, and continue to live there. You are not going to return to your camp to gather arsenal so that you can return for the rest of you. Is that understood?"

"I'm just meant to leave them here?" Sawyer questioned.

"Yes."

"Look, I don't know what kind of joint you're running here, Adolf, but on our side of the island, we don't run out on each other, we stick together."

Jack looked to Sawyer with a new respect for him. He was actually taking a stand for the group. His 'every man for himself' attitude had deserted him.

Henry only laughed, however. "There's two things interesting about that statement, James." He commented, watching how Sawyer's eyes tainted with a sting at the use of his real name. "First of all, it's ironic that you're comparing me to Adolf Hitler, when all I am trying to do is fix what we broke a long time ago. Secondly, if your people stick together, as it were, then why hasn't anyone come after you?"

"You sent Hurley back with a warning not to." Jack reminded.

"It's true," Henry agreed, turning back to Jack. "Hugo was sent back with a message, but we've also given James the message not to return, and he doesn't seem to comply with that."

"Never did like rules."

"I think it's time that you become aquainted with them, because if you come back here, or anywhere near this place, and we will know if you do...we'll shoot all four of them. One by one. Right in front of your eyes." Sawyer glared at him in response. Henry finished his threat and turned to the others. "We'll be back in the morning." He explained, and they all turned to leave. He was almost out of the door when Sawyer called back to him.

"Let her go instead!"

"Excuse me?" Henry asked, turning back.

"You heard me, Scarface, let Kate go instead of me."

Henry smirked, and looked to Kate who still sat immovable with the children. "Oh no, I'm afraid that's not possible." He explained. "She's the only one we were absolutely certain we would need."

He left, closing the door behind him, and Kate got to her feet. Jack walked over to her, and brought her into his arms.

"What do they want us for?" She asked him fearfully.

Jack didn't answer. He couldn't.


	16. My Last Gift To You

_**You have no idea how grateful I am for Juliet's flashback!!!! It gave me just what I wanted!**_

**_Enjoy this chapter...something we've wanted to happen for a long time is about to take place, and it's not the absence of Sawyer!_**

**Chapter 16: My Last Gift To You**

The food that was left for them that night tasted like ash in their mouths. Neither Jack, Kate nor Sawyer seemed to take the usual hope in the food they ate. Food gave them hope, knowing that it would get them through another day at the least, but tonight was different. For all they knew, it could be the last night that they saw each other. Although Jack and Kate feircely believed that they would be set free as well one day, there was nothing to quieten the nagging voice which spoke of their doom.

"I'm sorry." Sawyer murmered in a heavy drawl over the table, which although, seated four, he had crouched at the ground beside it, kneeling up so that it appeared he was seated beside Kora.

"What for?" Kate asked, not looking up from her food.

"That I couldn't get you out of here." He told her. Kate looked up, and he didn't meet her eyes for a moment, but when he did, the shame that was held within them unnerved her. She'd never seen Sawyer look so guilty, and it wasn't even for something that he'd done. "They could have let you go instead, but they didn't." He said bitterly, and dropped his gaze again. "They chose me."

He'd never wanted to be chosen less.

Kate let out a sigh, composing herself for a moment. When she'd heard them say the word 'free' earlier, she knew straight away that whatever bargain was being proposed, she would have nothing to do with it. Freedom had never been given to her, not even as a child, so she knew now not to hope for it. It was easier to forget that she was entitled to it rather than have to go through the betrayal every time it failed to reach her.

"Don't apologize, Sawyer." She told him softly, so softly that Jack looked to her, wondering whether or not there were tears in her eyes. "I wouldn't have left any of you behind, especially the twins." She said, casting her gaze to the two children who ate, almost oblivious to the conversation happening around them. They didn't seem to notice that something was wrong. They ate as they did every mealtime, usually laughing quietly to each other and stealing scraps off each others plates while the other wasn't looking. "I can't even think about leaving them behind here. I wouldn't have gone even if they'd let me."

That last comment had been spoken without her realising it, but she knew that it was true. She'd grown attatched to these children, loved them, even. She had this overwhelming need to protect them, and every inch of her encouragement was thrown upon them, which they accepted hungrily. She couldn't leave them behind. Not ever. They needed her as much as she needed them, and she knew that this was the same for Jack.

"I still think all this has something to do with them." Sawyer said, following Kate's gaze to the twins, who didn't even react to being watch. Seeing them play with the food like that, so absorbed in each other, reminded Kate of the time when Hurley had made them the feast, and her and Jack had been stealing each others food.

"Sawyer, we've been through this." Jack said firmly, attempting to stop the conversation before Sawyer got another chance to preach his theory.

"I'm just askin' ya'll to look at the obvious." He said. "Me and Babar get sent back, leaving you guys here along with two nippers who look exactly like the both of ya." Jack remained looking at his food, knowing that if he looked up at either Kate or the twins, he'd know Sawyer was telling the truth. "Something smells bad, and it sure ain't the food here."

Josh looked up from Kora's plate, recoiling his hand from where he had been about to take a few pasta shapes with his fork. "The food smells bad?" He questioned, sniffing his plate wearily.

"No, Josh, the food's fine." Kate assured him, eating her own.

"But Sawyer said-"

"Sawyer's wrong." Kate said firmly, glancing to Sawyer as she said this, not quite sure whether she was talking about the food or his theory.

"Let's just drop this, okay?" Jack sighed, looking around at all of them, his plan to think Sawyer was making things up instantly disipitating as three pairs of eyes met his, two matching green, and one matching his own.

"Drop the food?" Josh asked, clearly confused at what was going on around him.

"Eat your dinner, Josh." Kate told him calmly, before turning back to Sawyer when she was sure the boy was eating again. "What's done is done." She said to him quietly. "None of us want to leave each other here, but there's no way I'm leaving here without the kids." She said stubbornly.

Sawyer nodded, releasing a sigh which none of them heard, yet it was still heavy. "I'll come back for ya'll." He decided.

"No." Jack told him.

Sawyer looked at him strangely. "You serious?"

Jack looked up from his meal again, directly at Sawyer. "Alex said that when we leave, we have to take the twins with us." The twins smiled at the mention of Alex. "That must mean that we're going to be released at some point."

"And you're going to believe them?" Sawyer asked incredulously.

"Yeah. Yeah, I believe them." Jack said, surprisingly confident in his decision.

"Why?" Sawyer asked him.

"They know more about us than we know about each other." Jack pointed out. "We've got no other choice. Besides," He added. "Someone's got to keep running things back at the camp, and you're not going to be any good if you're dead."

Sawyer looked at him questioningly, and then at Kate, who looked as confused as he was. He turned back to Jack. "You putting me in charge, Doc?"

"I'm just saying, someone's got to do it." He took a bite of the pasta. "And nothing against the guy, but I'd rather it not be Locke."

Sawyer nodded slowly. "If I don't come back here, someone else will." He said.

Jack nodded, agreeing. He'd known that would happen if Sawyer returned without him and Kate. "And when they do, you're going to stop them."

Sawyer's look of confusion was quickly turning to one of anger, yet he kept his voice to a minimum, not wanting to disturb the twins. "Since when have you been so fine about saying here?" He asked accusingly. "Whatever happened to that live together, die alone, crap that you've been blurting out since we landed here?"

Jack looked at Kate protectively, and then at Sawyer. "If we leave together, we're going to die together." He said simply.

Kate agreed, biting her lip for a moment. "Let them take you home, Sawyer." She said in a tiny voice. "There's nothing you can do."

"And what about you guys?" He asked.

Kate turned her eyes to Jack, who mimicked her action. The look of determination mixed with that of his passion gave her no doubt that things would work out in their favour, and even if they didn't, they'd not be facing it alone.

"We've got each other." She nodded, not tearing her eyes away from Jack's now that she'd found solace in his gaze. "We'll be fine."

--------------------------------

Later that evening, Kate left the bathroom, a small towel slung over her shoulder. Josh trailed ahead of her, now in clean pyjamas that had been somehow replaced in the chest of drawers during the night. She always hated to think of someone in there during the night and them not knowing it.

As Josh joined his sister, also in clean bed clothes as Kate had bathed her before, near Jack, Sawyer got to his feet. "Right, come on kids." He told them.

Jack looked at the clock on the wall. "Sawyer, they're not going to fall asleep for another hour or so." He told him, looking at him slightly confused.

"Well, storytime, then." Sawyer shrugged.

"Yay!" Kora said, extremely pleased as she bounced towards Sawyer, Josh hot on her tail.

Kate looked at him strangely as she threw the towel down on the back of the couch. "Sawyer, what's going on?"

"I'm leaving tomorrow." He reminded them, although he didn't need to. "And if you're not gonna let me come back for you, then you're gonna let me at least do this for you."

"Do what?" Jack asked.

"Give you a night of garanteed privacy."

Jack raised his eyebrows, and Kate gaped at Sawyer. "Seriously?" She asked.

Sawyer nodded. "Me and the munchkins will stay in this room, and you can do whatever in your room." He told them.

The pair were silent for a moment, processing what Sawyer was willing to do for them, before both turned back to him.

"Kora needs to stay off her back." Jack told him, "Or the pain will come back and she'll be up crying all night."

"And don't let her go to sleep with wet hair." Kate added. "She'll get a cold and that's the last thing we need."

"Sure thing." Sawyer said, ushering the kids into the room and turning back to Jack and Kate. "Now, go. Skedaddle."

---------------------------

In their bedroom, Jack and Kate found themselves not madly making out as soon as the door was closed, but rather, taking up the familiar position, lying on their sides facing each other in a comfortable silence. Their hands were clasped tightly between the gap of thier bodies.

"Are we really going to be okay, Jack?" Kate asked, worry creeping into her voice.

Jack nodded, not taking his eyes off of her. "We're gonna be just fine." He said, resting his forehead against hers. "All of us."

She lifted her eyes to meet his. "You promise?"

"I promise." He said passionately. "I'm never going to leave you, okay?"

Kate nodded slightly. "'Kay." She whispered softly.

Jack closed the gap between their lips, meeting hers in a gentle kiss which wasn't intended to last more than a few seconds, but he still lingered against her, hungry for more, as he always did with her kisses. "I love you." He murmered against her lips as he drew away.

"I love you too." She replied, before letting out an ironic laugh. "This is so weird." She admitted.

"What is?" He asked.

"We're here playing moms and dads to these kids, who look so much like as that even Sawyer can see it." She said, carefully bringing up the subject of Sawyer's theory without trying to get Jack to avoid it like he did with Sawyer. "And I'm trying so hard to believe that they're not, because I know that we haven't met before here, and we definately haven't slept together...ever, because I don't do one night stands...so...theoretically, they can't be...but..."

"I know what you mean." Jack agreed.

"You do?" She asked, as he sighed.

"There's definately something about them that just seems to scream it to us." He mused. "I mean, straight away, there was a connection between us and them, a real solid trust, and we didn't even have to try and fight for it."

Kate nodded, biting her lip. "You know what this means though, right?" She prompted.

Jack nodded slowly. "It means that somehow, these are out kids." He said, the very idea giving them both a warm feeling in their stomachs that neither of them voiced. "Either that, or we've been cloned." He added.

Kate frowned. "But, that's impossible...right?"

"Completely." He said.

Kate sighed, snuggling in closer to him. "I don't want to talk about it right now." She told him, even though she'd been the one to bring the subject up. "We've got a night of privacy, and I don't want to waste time thinking about things we can talk about any time."

Jack propped himself up on his elbow as he held her tighter against him. "Are you sure?" He asked her. "We don't have to do this, just because we've got the chance to." He assured her, but he was met with her passionate eyes, and her lips hovering millimetres from his,

"We've come so close, and every time, we've been interrupted." She said. "Let's not waste tonight."

She leaned forward ever so quickly, and before either of them had time to think, she was kissing him again, and he was kissing her back. This kiss, however, was needy, desperate even, unlike their previous kiss, which had been soft and reassuring. This was filled with lust, like the one shared on their first night together in this place, and it grew even more passionate as the seconds ticked by.

Neither of them took time to think about it, and it wasn't long before Jack was rested atop of Kate, his body hovering over hers whilst she wound both her arms and her legs around him. His hand was at her hip, caressing the bare skin that was revealed there, and she let out a moan against his mouth, whispering his name in a sultry matter between sloppy, untimed but welcome kisses.

It wasn't until her hands began to remove his shirt that he realised it was really happening, and every part of his brain was forced away from outside focuses. He forget where they were, who was in the other room, and who, potentially could be watching them. All he wanted, all he needed, was Kate. When she struggled with his shirt, he pulled awy from the kiss which he had all too willingly dived into. His body was once again starting to respond to her touches...her kisses...her caresses...it wasn't supposed to happen like but this, but at a time when they were so desperate for a comfort that could only come from a real connection, they were willing to take what they could get.


	17. All You Need Is Love

The following morning, Kate woke up feeling warm, and not just because of the think, chocolate coloured duvet that covered her. No, the cause for her warmth was the pair of strong arms that surrounded her, encasing her in the same protection she'd never stopped feeling from them. She smiled through her tiredness, and burrowed closer against Jack, knowing that he was awake from the feeling of his arms tightening around her.

His lips pressed against her hair, exhaling after taking in a deep breath of her scent, one that could only be described as 'Kate'. "Morning, beautiful." He told her in a husky whisper, his voice still thick with sleep.

"Morning handsome." She replied, grinning into his shoulder whilst he held her . However, the temptation to look at him became too strong, and she raised her head, finding herself already looking directly into his eyes.

Despite the morning breath, they kissed. Slowly at first, they brushed thier lips against each other, before he claimed them fully, placing his lips full against hers. Both of them had butterflies in their stomachs, reminders of the passionate night they'd shared only a few hours ago. After a few gentle kisses, Jack sought entry into her mouth, and her lips parted eagerly, allowing his tongue to probe at her own.

Her hands travelled to the back of his neck as they kissed, one of them tangling the soft hair that rested there, whilst he kept one hand on her waist, as he had done all night, and brought the other up to her hair as he rolled them over, carefully placing himself atop of her. She let out a tiny whimper against his lips, which, in turn, let Jack's moan escape, sending vibrations through her mouth.

Kate clung tightly to him, and whether it lasted for a minute or an hour, neither of them really knew or cared. All they knew was that each extra second of contact made them feel weak and dizzy, yet, at the same time, filled them with an energy that neither had experienced anywhere else than in each other's embrace. They repeated the same passionate edgings they had done last night, until both were succumbing to their ectasy, slaves to their undying passions. Parting, but not moving an inch away from one another, Kate opened her eyes to find Jack smiling at her softly, their foreheads resting against one anothers.

She gave him a weak, exhausted, smile, running her fingers through his hair, which he took as an invitation to return his lips to her. This time, a sloppy kiss greeted her, untimed and all the same filled with love.

"I love you, you know that?" Jack spoke, smiling at her as he found himself more awake that he had been when he first opened his eyes. Kate always awakened something inside of him, whether it was pent up passion he'd been hiding for so long, or the energy he needed to get up and survive another day.

"Yeah, I know." She smiled, bringing her swollen lips to his lightly, lingering against him as she murmered the worse "I love you too," against him, every word brushing her lips against his in a way that drove him crazy.

He laughed lightly. "We should probably get dressed again." He pointed out to her, knowing that their discarded clothing was probably strewn all over the room in their uncontrolled removal of them. "The kids will no doubt be in here in a moment."

Kate nodded, smiling as she agreed with him. Every morning the twins came in to join them, just for an extra hour in bed but with someone to cuddle up to and make them feel special. It was still very early, but they never had a set time that they woke up, so it was best that they did cover themselves before some interesting questions arose.

They got out of bed, darting around the room to gather the bedclothes they'd slept in the night before. Kate's sweatpants were a sign that they were getting too used to their surroundings, Jack noticed. They were white, branded on the hip with a Dharma logo, portraying what looked like a mythical beast, most likely the hydra, if he remembered correctly. The same logo was on several things in the apartment. But for Kate to be wearing them, when she had at first been so adament to not even touch the unfamiliar clothing, filled him with a dread that she was giving in to the pressures they faced.

He pushed his fears aside, not wanting such a depressive thought to dampen the high they were still riding. Together, they climbed back into the bed, snuggling deep under the chocolate coloured duvet until they were cuccooned, not only in each others arms, but also beneath the thick blanket. Even though he hated their confinements, Jack had to admit that this was the most comfortable bed he could remember sleeping in, although maybe he was biased because it was the only bed he had ever shared with Kate.

"I know this is probably awful," He started, breaking the contented silence they had fallen into whilst holding each other. Kate looked up at him, her head rested on his shoulder as it titled upwards. "And I'll end up going to Hell for saying this after everything that's happened...but I'm glad we got brought here." He admitted, wanting to say it quickly before he got dragged into a firey pitt by minions. He was ashamed for saying this, because the fact that Kate was finally with him shouldn't stop him from hating what was happening to them, but somehow, being with her, it did.

"Yeah?" She enquired, urging him to go on as she rolled onto her stomach, propping herself up with her forearms so that her face was level with his.

He nodded. "I've never felt more at home than with you in my arms." He told her in a solid whisper, finding strength just from the smile he saw in her eyes from saying it.

"I think I can say the same for being in your arms." She assured him, leaning forwards from her propped up position to meet his lips lightly.

"I love you." He repeated, never wanting to stop seeing the light shining from her eyes when he told her that, "And if I was anywhere else in the world, I'd be an idiot. I should be with you, now and always. This is where I should be."

She smiled sweetly, cocking her head to one side slightly as his hand came up to cup her cheek. "Since when did you get to be so unimaginably romantic?" She asked him teasingly, even though she was relishing in every word.

"Since it made you smile like that." He told her, watching her face with an adoring smile of his own. She matched his grin, and he laughed lightly. "See."

She bit her lip through her smile, but through her happiness, she felt the familiar tug of her fears drag at her, an experience she hadn't had since her and Jack had made love for the first time the night before.

"This place makes me feel a thousand things, Jack." She admitted quietly, her eyes dropping from his gaze until she was met with the dark sheets covering the mattress. "But most of all, I don't think I've ever been more scared in my life, and that's what scares me most, because it's not me I'm scared for." She said, hoping that he could make some understanding of her ramblings.

He nodded, understanding straight away, like only he could. "The kids." He murmured, and as he spoke the words, she raised her head to his, and he could see the glimmer of tears forming in her eyes.

"The fact that they've spent their entire lives here, in this place, that this, how we're living here, is the high point of thier lives so far...that scares me so much." She said emotionally, not wanting to cry, but the twins lifestyle had already erupted feelings within her she never thought she was capable of experiencing.

Jack leaned forwards, placing a soft kiss on her forehead, and then raising her chin so that he could see directly into her eyes once more. "I'm going to get us all out of here, okay?" He whispered to her, his breath touching her skin and reassuring her even more than his voice was. "I promise. I'm going to get us out of here, together, and we're going to go home." Kate nodded, and Jack sighed. "I just...I just don't know what's going to happen next." He admitted. Despite his intention to ease her fears, he just couldn't lie to her.

"Just promise me one thing." She asked of him. "That we'll do it together. Whatever happens, whatever comes...we'll get through it together." She said, firmly gripping his hands in her own.

He squeezed her hands, not too tightly, but not loosely either, and stared directly into his eyes, not disturbing the connection they were experiencing. "Whatever happens, whatever comes...know that I love you." He said.

She nodded, and they were about to kiss again, this time not for habit, but for comfort, when the bedroom door creaked open slowly.

"Is it morning time?" Kora's tiny voice asked.

Kate smiled, exhaling a breath against Jack's lips, which she had been so close to touching. She kissed him chastely, softly, like they'd do if for the rest of their lives, and then rolled back over, placing her head against the pillows again and seeing the two heads pokeing through the gap in the open door.

"Yeah, it's morning time." Jack told them.

The padding of the twins' feet was the only sound in the room as the twins made their way over to the bed, climbing on the end before bouncing their way to the top end. They jumped down into the space between Jack and Kate, Kora cuddling up to Jack, and Josh to Kate. They were all tightly locked together, the same way they were every morning. It was so normal, yet different from anything they'd ever had in their lives. Wasn't this everyone's dream, to be woken by their children before smiling in bed together, a good start to a better day?

However, something was different this morning, and this was the presence of two stuffed animals, one in each twin's hand. Both were rabbits, old and worn, like any child's favourite toy would be, and they were identical save for colour. Josh's was a pale blue, and Kora's a baby pink, the typical colours you'd associate with young children of each gender.

"Where did these come from?" Kate asked with a curious frown, fingering it as Josh dangled it before her to show her.

"They're our bunnies." Kora said proudly.

Jack smiled, clearly these were toys they'd been attached too before they'd been brought to them. It was something about the way they held them that seemed to complete them. "Did you find them in the boxes in your room?" He asked them, knowing that a lot of them still hadn't been looked through.

Kora shook her head. "Alex brung them this morning." She explained. "They were a special surprise 'cause we've been good."

"I thought we losted them." Josh said, tucking his rabbit underneath the crook of his arm to make sure that he wasn't going to lose it again.

"We didn't lose them." Kora told him. "They took them away, but Alex brung them back for us."

Kate smiled, seeing how happy the two children were now that they had been reunited with their favourite toys. Of course, out of all of the terrible things that The Others had done to them, Kate thought that taking their favourite toys away from them was as harsh punishement as the physical pain they'd been submitted too.

"Do the bunnies have names?" Kate asked them.

Kora and Josh looked at each other, shaking their heads. "Should bunnies have names?" Kora asked.

"I think we should give them names." Kate smiled. "What do you think?"

They nodded. "What can we call them?" Josh asked.

Jack had an idea. "Why don't you go get the story we read yesterday." He suggested. "That had bunnies in it."

Kora looked at him, a pleading expression on her face. "But that's all the way in our bedroom." She said, and then brightened. "I know. UNCLE SAWYER!" She called.

She giggled, pleased with herself when Sawyer appeared in the doorway. At first, he couldn't take his eyes off the group in the bed...they just looked so much like a family. He wasn't sure why they rejected his ideas that they were their children somehow. It was so obvious. He loved Kate to no end, but he knew that she belonged with Jack...and that same acceptance was allowing him to see what they couldn't. Something was going on here, and it all looked too natural to be coincidence.

"You bellowed, little miss?" He said sarcastically to Kora, leaning against the doorframe.

"Can you find the bunny book?" She asked him sweetly, fluttering her eyelashes.

"Magic word?" He prompted from her, raising his eyebrows.

"Please." She said, still fluttering away. "Can you find the bunny book, please?"

Jack smiled, watching the determined sweetness that radiated from the young girl. She had the same charming lure over Sawyer that Kate did, where he was a slave to any of her demands because he just couldn't resist.

"Where did you put it?" He asked her.

"Under my pillow." She told him, and Sawyer left to retrieve the book.

When he returned, Kate discovered that the bunny book was Peter Rabbit. Something the twins loved hearing about. Sawyer had introduced them to rabbit stories, telling them a lighter version of Watership Down off the back of his hand a few days before, and now they loved hearing all about rabbits in stories. It made sense now, what with their toy rabbits appearing that morning.

Kora squealed with delight, taking the book and holding it up to Jack. "Daddy-Jack read?" She requested.

Daddy-Jack. Kora had called Jack 'Daddy-Jack'.

Sawyer raised his eyebrows, and Kate took a sharp breath, her shock evident, and Jack looked at her. Their eyes connected, and his expression was a sad one. In his eyes, Kate could see just how much he really cared for the twins, as much as she did, and that her calling him that name tore him in two. On the one hand, he was thrilled because he'd never suspected that he'd have the chance for children once his marriage to Sarah had fallen apart, but on the other hand, he didn't know if these were his children or not, no matter how much he had begun to fall in love with them.

Kora frowned. "Daddy-Jack?" She asked again, confused as to why everything around her had suddenly stopped.

Jack sighed, and lifted Kora from the space between him and Kate, sitting her in his lap now that he had sat up in the bed. She looked up at him, extremely confused and a bit worried, and he gave her a sad smile, looking just as curious as she did.

"Why did you call me Daddy-Jack?" He asked her softly.

She shrugged, looking like she was being scolded for a moment, until she gave Jack a tiny smile. "'Cause Alex said that one day my Mommy and Daddy would come get us." She explained. "And she said that we'd know they were Mommy and Daddy 'cause we'd love them. And you and Kate came and got us, and we love you. I want you and Kate to be our Mommy and Daddy."

Jack had tears in his eyes now. This tiny child, who had done nothing more than capture his affections in the quickest way, loved him. He'd wanted to be a father for as long as he could remember, always wanting to know that his own father wouldn't have caused him so much damage that he wouldn't love his own children. He knew that he'd always make time for them, always take them to the park to play, always be at their school for events like productions and parents night, always be at their side when they were sick, and there to cheer them on when they were progressng.

When he'd married Sarah, he thought he might get his chance to be a father, even though as time went on, he was worried that was being his father's shadow more than ever. Everyone told him how alike they were, and he wanted to scream at them that this wasn't true, and that he'd be a good husband and father. However, it wasn't so. He wasn't a good husband, he was an absent one. He thought that he'd loved her, but compared to what he felt now, he knew that it was nothing more than a simple affection that he'd held for Sarah, even if he did, at one point, believe that he loved her.

Sarah had left, taking with him any possibility for having a child. By then, he was determined not to let another woman pull a number on him like that, even though he knew that his absence in their relationship had been the cause for her turning to another man's arms. He knew that this was his fault, but he couldn't stop the fact that it broke his heart. He couldn't bear to have his heart broken like that again, even if it did come at the expense of having no children in his life.

But then he'd been brought to this island, and he'd met Kate, and even though they were complicated at first, he'd found himself falling in love with her, despite his best intentions. He'd kept trying to deny that she had captured his heart, but not even knowing that her past was darker than his stopped his affections from flowing. He just loved her, it was as simply, and yet complicated, as that.

Then they'd been taken, forced against their will into this place which had been nothing short of a train wreck upon the fragile state of being they had established after the crash. The appearance of the twins had been a shock, but Alex had said they were special, and that the children needed them.

At first, he'd thought it was a medical thing, that as a doctor, he would be suitable to check her over and be done with it, but then they'd been moved to this place, and after one simple day, a mere twelve hours within their presence, he couldn't deny that he'd fallen in love with them either. When they smiled, he smiled, even though they were struggling to get from day to day within their domestic prison. When they cried, his heart felt like it was tearing in two, and he found himself willing to go to the ends of the earth to stop their fears. When they were scared, he wanted to hold them, and show them that as long as he was there, they had no reason to be afraid, because he was going to protect them for as long as he lived.

He snapped back into the room, away from the thoughts that had flooded him with emotion. Like Kate had done earlier, the shimmery residue of tears was clouding his vision, but he could still clearly see the little girl before him, looking up at him with the expression he'd once given to his father, when he was that age. The expectance, waiting for guidance, wanting to know everything that he had to offer because he was the guider, the protector, the _father_, and in a child's eyes, they knew everything.

Kora's eyes, the exact replica of those of the woman he loved stronger than any burning passion he'd ever experienced, were unmoving as she watched him, a hopeful and yet dejected expression holding on her face. She was hoping that he would respond to her decleration, just like any child would expect to be told that when they said that they loved someone. It was how they learnt to love, by recieveing. It was how they learnt to give it. Yet, every passing second which held Jack silent was increasing the rejection she felt.

Jack reached forward, closing his arms behind her back and bringing her fully into his arms. She moulded against him, a perfect fit for him to cradly against his chest. Her tiny arms linked around his neck, her face screwing up tightly as she pressed it to his neck, and he heard her sniffling against him. That's why her face had screwed up, he realised, because, like Kate, she'd been trying to control her tears. Kora had learnt a long time ago that no one came when she cried, but that had changed when Jack and Kate had come along.

Jack rubbed her back as she gripped him tightly, feeling Kate and Sawyer's eyes upon him, but not meeting either of them. Kora needed him now. "It's okay." He whispered to her, holding her a closely as he could to make sure that she knew how much he wanted her in his arms. "It's all right, Kora, you don't need to cry."

"Are we really gonna get to go away from here?" She asked him hopefully, her tears finally hitting his neck, which caused him to instantly draw her back from him. She looked into his eyes, watching him as he scooped up her tears with his thumb.

"Don't you cry, honey, you're too pretty when you smile." He told her, giving her a small smile. She gave him a quick smile, but it faded again because her question had gone unanswered. "Yeah, we're gonna get to go away from here." He nodded, never breaking their eye contact.

"When?" She asked, bringing up her sleeve to wipe her cheeks.

"I don't know." He said honestly. "But I promise you, we're gonna go far away from this place. So far away that no one can ever hurt you ever again. I won't let them."

"Really?" She asked hopefully, her eyes shining with a hope that was so strong, he'd never seen it in her eyes, not once since they'd first arrived here.

"Really." He smiled at her. "You know why?" She shook her head. "Because you're my special girl, Kora, and I'm going to make sure that no one ever hurts you ever again."

She nodded. "That's a thing that Daddy's say." She told him with a sniffle.

Jack let out a tiny laugh, and nodded. "Well, I guess that's because I'm Daddy-Jack." He told her.

Kora smiled, and held onto him again, giving him a kiss on the cheek with her sloppy lips. "I love you lots, Daddy-Jack." She told him.

Jack kissed the side of her head where she was holding onto him, and held her tightly once more. "I love you lots too, Kora."

"Do you love me lots, too?" Josh asked from Jack's side.

Jack smiled at him, ruffling his hair as he held onto his arm. He could see Kate smiling at him as well, her cheeks shining with tears at witnessing such a touching exchange between him and the twins. "Course I love you lots." Jack told him. "You're my special boy."

Kora released herself from Jack's arms, and picked up her story book. "I changed my mind." She said. "I want Mommy Kate to read the story now."

Kate smiled, and nodded, letting the twins come to her, snuggling up in her arms as Kora held the storybook open for her to read from. "Okay, baby." She whispered. "We'll read the story."

Her eyes fell upon the first page, and she began to read. "_Once upon a time, there were four little rabbits, and there anmes were; Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter. They lived with their Mother in a sand-bank, underneath the root of a very big fir tree..."_


	18. Goodbye, My Friend

Kate stood silently; her bottom lip twitched in the grasp of her teeth whilst her hands nervously wrung one another. If there wasn't a million thoughts in her mind at that second, she might have been tempted to get teary, but the possibility of everything falling to pieces depended on her strength now. If she wasn't strong, then Jack would worry, and do something that might land them in extreme danger. There was no turning to Sawyer with her problems anymore, or rather, have Sawyer conveniently guess what was going on inside her head; because Sawyer wasn't going to be there sometime soon.

Sawyer was going home.

"Sawyer..." she started, looking at the man before her, who had grown to be one of the best, yet complicated, friends she had ever had in her life.

"Don't drag this out, Freckles." Sawyer rolled his eyes, covering up how much he didn't want to say goodbyes either.

Kate sighed. "Please, don't do anything stupid." She pleaded with him.

He half smirked at her. "Where would I get an idea like that?" He said, not even bothering to try and sound innocent.

"Sawyer, _please_."

"They're not gonna kill me just for coming back here." He pointed out.

Kate gestured to the bedroom, where the twins were inside with Jack practicing their reading again. "You saw what they did to Kora just for protecting her brother. Do you really think they'll hesitate to shoot _you_?"

Sawyer half-smiled again. It was no secret how much he, more than any of the trio, annoyed the Others. "Their aim is terribly anyway." He shrugged off.

"Sawyer---"

"I can't let you stay here, Kate." His voice had dropped to a quiet and serious tone, and there was a softness, almost a protectiveness in his eyes, that Kate had never seen before from Sawyer.

"Jack and I are safe as long as we look after the kids." She said, her voice equally quiet.

"They dumped the kids on ya'll out of the blue." Sawyer reminded her. "What happens when they take the kids back?"

"Sawyer-"

"You guys are dead, that's what happens." He finished his own question.

Kate took a breath, sighing deeply. "Alex said we're taking them out of here. She said we're taking them home." That was the one hope that she was clinging to.

"Alex is sixteen." Sawyer reminded her. "How can you trust her over the ones with the guns?"

"Because she's not holding a gun." Kate said defensively.

"That you know of." Sawyer argued back.

Kate resisted the urge to roll her eyes, knowing that he was just arguing for the sake of it now. "Please, Sawyer." She pleaded with him once again. "Don't get yourself killed trying to save us."

Sawyer eyed her strangely. "You're a runner, Freckles. You don't stay behind for nothin' or no one."

She folded her arms, leaning against the wall beside her and not meeting his eyes. "Things are different now, Sawyer." She told him quietly.

Sawyer's eyes drifted to the closed bedroom door beside them for a moment, and then back at Kate's strange behaviour. "The kids, that's it, right?" He realised. "Why are you so attached to them?"

"They've never had parents--"

"No one said you had to be their Mom, Freckles." He pointed out to her.

"But something inside of me still tells me that I should be." She blurted out before she could comprehend what she was saying. A silence hung in the air, and she looked away from the intense stare she was receiving from Sawyer. He waited for her to speak again, but it was at least a minute until words escaped her. "Sawyer, I can't explain it but...part of me thinks..._knows_...that I have _something _to do with these children. There's something about them..."

"I know, I see it too." He assured her softly.

She shook her head. "It's crazy, I know."

"Not that crazy, at least, not when you compare it to the polar bears anyways." He reminded her, causing her to smile. "Just...don't let this be the death of you, okay?" He warned her. "You know I'd get the blame for it back at camp and I'd hate to have that on my back considering I'm in charge now and all."

"You're taking this leadership business to heart." Kate observed lightly.

Sawyer shrugged, trying not to seem so interested. "If someone doesn't take charge, Claire's kid's gonna be next in line for the throne after the Drivesucks loser feeds half the camp to boars."

Before Kate could even think about scolding him for talking about Charlie that way, the sound of the main door opening interrupted them. Tom poked his head around.

"Ten minutes, James." He barked.

Sawyer smiled sarcastically. "You givin' me time to say goodbye, Pork chop? Aw, I guess there _is _a heart in there somewhere."

Tom glared at him. "_Two _minutes."

"_There's _the crazy bastard I know and love." Sawyer called out as he shut the door behind him.

Kate looked at Sawyer, now that they were alone again. Two minutes, is that all it came down to now? She tried to think of something to say, anything other than 'goodbye', but was failed by her tongue. In her silence, Sawyer turned and went into the side bedroom. When he opened the door, Jack looked up, as did the children, only Jack climbed off the bed he was sitting on, and nodded at Sawyer knowingly when he left the room. When they were alone, Sawyer and the twins sat together on one of the beds.

Kora looked up at him with her wise, all-knowing eyes. "You're going away now, aren't you?" She realised.

"Yeah." Sawyer confirmed.

"Where?" She pried.

"Back to the beach where we came from."

"Why?"

"Because they said I have to."

"You said you didn't like rules." Josh piped up from his other side, and he reached out and held on to Sawyer's bicep.

"I don't." Sawyer shook his head.

"Then why are you listening you them?" Josh challenged him.

Sawyer ruffled his brown hair. "'Cause if I go, it means that you can come to the beach one day too." He explained.

Kora knelt up beside him, almost clapping her hands together in glee. "Really?"

"Yeah, but you gotta do something for me." He told them.

"Okay." Kora nodded, sitting back down beside him.

"Now, you like Jack and Kate, don't you?" Sawyer asked, and the twins both nodded firmly. "With me not here, there's no one there to take care of them, so you gotta do it. I need you to make sure that they look after each other even when they're lookin' after ya'll. You gotta be big kids now. Can y'all do that for Uncle Sawyer?"

"Yeah!" Kora cried out with a smile.

"Good." Sawyer nodded. "Now, I gotta go now, but when you get to the beach, I'll show you how to make a proper tent, okay?"

"Promise?" Josh asked, tightening his hold on Sawyer's arm.

"Yeah, I promise." He nodded.

"Bye, Uncle Sawyer." Kora whispered as she hugged him tightly from his side.

"Bye." Josh copied, also hugging him.

It took a moment, but Sawyer soon softened and embraced the children in return. Then, he made to stand up and they released him. "See you later, kids." He mumbled as he left the room.

Outside, he was instantly met with an embrace from Kate. This time, he didn't need to think before he returned the hold, and he held Kate for a long time, ignoring the eyes of Tom and a few other guards that now stood in the room. "Take care of yourself, Sawyer." She mumbled against his shoulder.

"You too, Freckles." He said simply as he released her.

He met Jack's eyes, and the feud between them ended the moment when they shook hands.

"Good luck." Jack told him simply.

"Luck is for losers." Sawyer shrugged off, before grinning slyly. "Good luck to you though." He added. Jack simply shook his head, smiling lightly. The feud might have ended, but some things would never change. "Take care of Freckles." He added again, his voice quiet so that Kate couldn't hear.

"Of course." Jack nodded.

As Jack and Sawyer stepped away from each other, the two guards with Tom grabbed an arm each, escorting a mildly well behaved Sawyer from the room. However, there was one thing still playing on Kate's mind.

"Sawyer!" She called out, causing the guards to stop for a moment. Sawyer and Kate looked at each other, their eyes connecting. "Do you really think I'm not crazy?" She checked.

"I know you're a bit nutty an' all sometimes, Thelma, but we're not wrong about this one." Sawyer said, before the door was shut behind him, completely cutting him off from Jack and Kate.

In the silence, Kate stared at the closed door, whilst Jack came and stood beside her. "What, exactly, aren't you wrong about?" He asked her.

She turned to him, unshed tears in her eyes, and swallowed a nervous lump in her throat. "Jack, I need to talk to you about something."

----

It was at least a two hour walk before the bag was removed from Sawyer's head. The intense heat that had been missed whilst he was shut up in that room had hit him like a ton of bricks, and he'd almost forgotten how exhausting a trek could be in the island heat. Of course, this trek wasn't at his walking speed either. It was of the two men pulling him along. For the moment, he was behaving, as Kate had begged him to do, but the bright sunlight invading his eyes after two hours of strict darkness was adding to his irritation.

"There we are." A blonde haired woman he'd learned to be named Juliet said, as she untied his hands from behind his back. "You're free to go."

Sawyer looked over his shoulder at her. "What, no charge for the mini-bar?" He teased.

"Don't make this difficult for yourself, James." She warned him.

"You should lighten up, Dorothy. It's called a sense of humour." He told her rather grumpily.

"Go back to your people." She instructed him. "If any of them return to this place, we will shoot them."

"Is that so?" Sawyer questioned lightly.

"Just go." Juliet told him.

"Well, you see... I never was too fond of the rules." He told her, before turning quickly on the spot, grabbing the gun from the guard standing beside him.

He shot at the guards, unsure whether they were alive or dead but not caring as they fell to the ground, and within seconds of his outburst, he was left with the blonde woman in his arms, holding her tightly with one arm, and keeping the gun trained on her head with the other arm.

"Now, you and me are gonna have a little _chat_, Blondie." He told her, whilst she began to tremble in his arms. "And you're gonna tell me _all about _those kids back there."


	19. All Kicking Off

On the screen's, Tom watched as the couple on the screen exchanged words. Even though he couldn't hear what was being said, there was no mistaking what words they were exchanging. He reached for the phone, and waited for it to be answered the other end.

"It's me...listen, we've got a problem..." he looked back to the screens, where he could now see Shephard's back with Austen's face pressed into his shoulder. "...they've figured it out."

----

Beth didn't bother to consider what might happen if she was seen when she ran into Sarah's house. The door almost bounced off the hinges when she burst it open, breathing heavily in the doorway to make up for the run she had just completed.

"Sarah! Sarah, are you here?" She called out, her own question answered with the smell of chocolate brownies.

"I'm in the kitchen." Sarah replied, and Beth jogged into the other room. Sarah looked up from the brownies she was slicing, and raised her eyebrows at Beth. "Whoa, where's the fire?" She half-laughed.

"They know." Beth told her simply.

She frowned. "What?"

"Katie figured it out, apparently she just told Jack." Beth elaborated.

Sarah's eyes widened as she finally realised what the younger woman was talking about. "What, exactly, have they figured out?" She asked, setting the brownies aside and trying to remain calm.

"More than we thought they would."

Sarah nodded slowly. "Do they know about us?"

"Not you." Beth assured her, whilst Sarah simply stared at her. "Katie told Jack about what she did to help me."

"So they know it's a possibility." She realised.

"He's a doctor. He suggested the idea." Beth revealed. Sarah, to Beth's suprise, simply laughed. "What's so funny?"

"You're getting way in over your head with this, Beth." Sarah smiled at her. "The kid will go home with their real parents, and everyone will give up their little obsession with Jack and Kate. We might actually get a nromal life for a chance."

Beth's eyes blazed fire as she stepped closer to the amused woman. "Do you not remember wha we talked about the other day?"

"Beth--"

"He wants us to talk to them." She told her.

Sarah stopped again. "When?" She asked.

"Tomorrow morning." Sarah sighed, and Ben continued. "They'll gas them in the night, and take them for questioning, only we'll be there to explain."

Sarah cast her eyes onto the brownies that clearly weren't going to be eaten with the same satisfaction now. "How much does he want us to explain?" She asked quietly, a feeling of dread arising in her stomach.

"Everything."

----

Back in the control room, Tom watched as their ambitious leader sat in the chair he had previously occupied, rubbing his temples. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?" He asked Tom, not looking up from where his head was bent.

"How much sooner could I have told you?" Tom questioned. "I called you straight away---"

"Austen and Ford have been suggesting this for days, and I find out by watching the reruns?"

"We didn't expect them to find out so quickly." Tom defended himself.

"We didn't expact them to turn up here together, either. When are you going to realise that this island has a way of making things happen?" He tried to drum it into Tom, turning round in his chair to face him. Rather than a satisfying look of guilt, he noticed that Tom's eyes drifted up to the clock on the wall. "Am I keeping you from something, Tom?" He asked.

"Juliet's not back yet." He pointed out.

"She went with Miles and Christov to take Ford back home."

"She left hours ago, she should be back by now." Tom sighed. "You don't think Ford has tried anything?"

"He knows what will happen if he doesn't keep to his side of the bargain."

----

Jack and Kate were lying together on the double bed, the twins once again between them, sleeping peacefully. For the past few moments, a silence had fallen over them, but neither of the pair were planning on sleeping. Too many thoughts were running through their heads. Jack had Josh curled up to his side, and Kora was mimicking the same position with Kate. Jack sighed, and Kate raised her head to him.

"This whole thing just doesn't seem possible." Jack whispered. "I mean, a plane crash onto a polar bear filled tropical jungle is one thing, but...this?"

Kate lowered her eyes again. "You think I'm crazy, don't you?"

"No, I don't." Jack assured her.

"But it doesn't seem possible." She repeated his words.

"That doesn't mean it isn't right." He pointed out to her.

Kate shook her head slowly. "Jack, you don't have to back me up on this just because you love me, you know." She told him quietly.

"Kate, the reason I'm backing you up on this is because she loves me." He told her, looking down at Kora, who lay curled to her side and stroking her hair whilst she slept. "When she told me that this morning...something was...something was there that hadn't been there before." He explained. "I felt something, and it wasn't one of those 'oh, bless her' things. It was something more. I felt connected to her. I felt an emotion that I've only ever felt around you before, and the same goes for Josh. It just...it seems crazy, but it feels right."

"But if it is right, it means that Beth is alive." Kate realised.

"Yeah, I guess so." Jack nodded.

"That accident...it would all have been fake." Kate continued, going off into her own word. "The blood, the body I identified...it wasn't real. It never was."

"Kate--"

"Do you have any idea how many nightmares I had, Jack?" She asked, tears in her eyes. "Identifying my best friend's body at the hospital because her supposedly brilliant husband was too drunk to stagger out of the bar, let alone identify the corpse of the woman he'd married? He wouldn't even notice she wasn't there to make his dinner, but I noticed she was gone. I knew she was gone because I saw the car, and I saw the blood. I todl the police that it was her body, and I had nightmares about what I saw every night...every night, until her corpse was replaced with Tom's. I just...I can't believe that she would have made me go through that." She wiped away the tears underneath her eyes. "She was supposed to be my best friend..."

Jack raised his hand from Kora's head, and carressed her cheek. "Sometimes, people do things for the wrong reasons."

Kate nodded and dropped her gaze to the children once again. She took in their steady breathing, and their similar appearances to the people that held them, and sighed. "These are our children, Jack." She whispered.

Jack nodded. "Yeah, they are."


	20. What Lies Before Us

**Chapter Twenty: What Lies Before Us**

They'd been drugged. Again.

Or at least, Kate had. Her head was spinning with an all too familiar nausea present in her entire body. Her arms felt heavy, and when she tried to move them she found that she couldn't...not only had she been drugged, she'd been restrained. Feeling the darkness creeping up on her again she opened her mouth further to bring in more oxygen to her aching body, but a piece of cloth prevented her. Gagged, as well, she was. She lifted her eyes, painfully adjusting them to the familiar bright room. Besides her, Jack was watching her with concern, also bound and gagged.

"Ah, excellent, she's awake. I must say Kate, this is easier now that we know exactly how much sedative to give you without you suffering too long of an aftermath reaction."

That voice. Him. She turned her head slowly, the room spinning even more with the movement, and saw Henry Gale walking towards them. She held back the whimper growing in the back of her throat, but it was not her safety she was concerned for. The children. Where were they? The last time her and Jack had been dragged off for questioning the children had been mistreated, and she wasn't going to let that happen again. Struggling as hard as she could to speak through the gag, she found that all she was getting out was mumbles - mumbles that Jack was also emitting.

"Now, that's not very good manners, is it?" he taunted them. "If you promise to behave, we'll take away the gags." Requiring their voices to have their questions answered, the two fell silent. "I'm going to take that as a yes, but any back chat and I'm afraid that you'll find that your voice is a priviledge, not an ammenity."

As soon as Kate felt her gag removed, she spoke up. "Where are the kids?" she asked him bitterly.

"My, my, we are direct," Henry answered, almost amused, turning to release Jack from his silence.

"What have you done with them?" Jack asked, not even waiting until the gag was removed so the first half came out somewhat distorted.

"They're safe," Henry assured them under Jack's somewhat murderous glare. "We're not monsters, Jack."

"I know some wounds on a little girl's back that would prove differently."

Henry mused this thought, pacing around before them. "You know, it's interesting that your first thought is for the children," he acknowledged. "Why is that? Is there some kind of connection between you, a bond you've formed over the past week?"

"They're not safe with you!" Kate spat out.

Henry turned to her calmly. "Based on your history, Katherine, one could argue that they're not particularly safe with you, either."

Kate glared at him, but remained silent. "What do you want from us?" Jack asked him, a question that had been asked a thousand times but never answered.

"I want what I've wanted from the start, Jack," he explained, as if that were to divulge everything. "I want those little brats off my hands. We've finished our experiments--"

"Experiments?" Kate cut him off.

"Interruptions are sure, Katherine. Consider that a warning. One more interruption and you'll find yourself silenced again," he said calmly before returning to his explanation. "As I was saying, all our intentions for the children have come to an end and we have no more need for them...it was surprising how after all this time, just when we had finished what we'd started five years ago, the two of you fall out of the sky. I'm not a firm believer in destiny, but I believe that there is a greater force playing a part here."

"What the hell were you doing to them?" Kate demanded.

"Unfortunately, that's not for me to explain." Henry told them.

"Well someone had better tell us what's going on here--" Jack warned him.

"Oh, they will, Jack," Henry said, his voice now so calm that it was unnerving. "In fact, there are two people waiting outside right now wanting to have a very interesting conversation with you. Hold on, I'll get them."

He left, with Jack and Kate watching his exit with keen interest. As soon as the door was closed behind him, Jack instantly turned to the woman besides him. "Don't worry," he assured her, before she could even voice her concerns.

"What's going on, Jack?" she asked him.

"I don't know," he admitted. "They're not going to hurt us, though."

"How do you know that?"

"Look how they reacted with Kora," he reminded her. "If they were going to hurt us, they would have done it by now."

The door began to open again, and two women walked in, followed by two jaws dropping.

"Oh...my...

"...god..."


	21. Answers

**It's long overdue, but hopefully this clears up some questions...**

Chapter Twenty One:

Jack shook his head from side to side, unable to process what was happening before him. "No..." he whispered. "No, this can't be possible."

Two blonde women were stood before them, one of whom he recognised all too vividly.

"Sarah?"

"Hello, Jack," she said with a sad smile.

"What?" he asked incredulously. "...how?"

"It's a long story," she shrugged.

"Katie..." the woman beside her, Beth, murmered. Kate turned away from her, not bothering to hide the tears that spilled down her cheeks. "Katie, I never meant-"

"Look, perhaps we'd better start at the beginning," Sarah suggested.

"Sarah, what do you have to do with any of this?" Jack asked her. "These people...are you one of them?"

She wilted under his confused gaze for a moment. "Jack, this is a complicated issue we're dealing with here," she explained. "If you really want to understand how this has unfolded into you two ending up here together, I'd suggest you listen to to what Beth and I have to say first."

"Then you'd better explain quickly because I've got a whole bunch of questions," he told her.

Sarah cast a sideways glance at Beth, who couldn't take her eyes off of Kate, and started. "We got involved with Ben when we were in our teens," she started.

"Wait, who's Ben?" Jack asked.

"I believe you've been calling him Henry Gale this whole time," she told him.

"Ben..." he repeated slowly. "Right."

"I was in college when he contacted me, or rather, my mother," she explained. "He knew my father from somewhere, and I later found out that my father was one of the original members of the Dharma Initiative to come to this island."

"You told me your father died when you were six," he remembered.

"No, my father came to this island when I was six," she corrected. "You see, Jack, once you come to this island, you cannot leave it until your purpose is fulfulled, and my father was caught by the security system that lurks in the jungles before his purpose was fulfilled. Either way, by the time you came into my life he was dead."

"Then what was your purpose here?" he asked.

"Ben contacted me, and recruited me and Tom at the same," she remembered. "I didn't know either of them before then, and I didn't even understand their proposal at the time--"

"So why did you do it?" he asked, before he realised what 'it' was.

"I was in college and my mother worked in a diner," she cast a look to Jack's side. "I think Katherine understands how hard it is to even consider college when you're in that sort of financial situation." Kate glared at her through teary eyes. "I needed the money, and they offered to pay my entire tuition plus living expenses. Actually, the sort of money they offered I wouldn't have needed anything more than that for my entire life. It was just what I had to do for the money that was complicated and immoral."

"Then why did you do it?" he asked her again.

"Do you remember my sister, Rachel?" she asked.

"Yes, she came to the wedding with her baby."

"Rachel isn't my only sister," she explained. "My younger sister, yes, but I have an older sister, too. Her name is Juliet. She was one of the primary carers, along with Alex, to be involved with raising the twins. Juliet disappeared shortly after Rachel's cancer went into remission, and Rachel got pregnant thanks to Juliet's treatment and research. The last we heard of her, she went to Portland for a job. She was hired by some fancy company who admired her work and she said she'd be back in six months, in time for Rachel's due date...but six months came and went and she never came back. It turns out she was here the whole time."

"And what does she have to do with this?" Jack asked.

"Juliet's research was based around artificially created life," she told him. "Insemination, basically. Her experiments were praised as a gift...she could create life where life shouldn't be able to thrive. Her first breakthrough was getting a male fieldmouse pregnant through insemination."

"A male fieldmouse?" Jack repeated incredulously.

"Yes, quite remarkable," she nodded. "Anyway, they brought her here to solve the problem of the pregnant women dying."

"They were dying?" he asked.

"Yeah, and horrible deaths too," she grimaced. "If a woman fell pregnan, she'd be dead before the end of her second trimestar, if she even made it that far. There was no logical explanation of it either, which is why they brought her out here. The women didn't stop dying at first, if anything it got worse, but then Juliet and Bea came up with a solution."

"Involving us?" he realised.

"A woman gave birth here and survived, as did her child. The conception happened before they came to the island. In theory, we just needed to have all the children conceived before the couples were recruited to Dharma Initiative, but because of the turnover of new recruits it was never a certainty, and none were enthusiastic about the possibility of it ending badly."

"I wonder why," he said, in a sarcastic drawl that would have made Sawyer proud.

"In the end, the answer was simple. We needed to get the sperm and the eggs back from the mainland and bring them to the island frozen so that we could experiment in the best conditions. Luckily, Juliet was trained in this so we didn't have any doubts. We just needed to find donors."

"And that's how you found me and Kate," he finished for her.

She shrugged. "In a nutshell, yes."

Jack turned his attention to Beth. "What about you?" he asked. "How did they get you into this?"

Beth looked nervous, unable to look away from Kate, who would still not look at her. "My husband...he forced me."

"He forced you?"

"You have to understand," she pleaded. "Katie and I had been best friends since we were four years old...best friends. Me, her and Tommy Brannon..."

Kate looked up at Beth now, despise written all over her face. "Yeah, Tom's dead now, did you know that?" she spat at her.

Sheepishly, Beth looked down at her shoes. "Yeah, I knew," she admitted. "I had to bring the tape you recorded together out here withme, and they asked me to retrieve it from his personal effects in the morgue..."

"You gave them the tape?" Kate cried.

"I had no other choice, Katie, you have to understand-"

"How long were you working for them?" she asked.

"Katie-"

"How long were you lying to us?" she asked, raising her voice dangerously.

"Since I married Jason," she replied calmly, with an ironic smile. "It's almost funny, really...you always did tell me he was crazy."

"No, Beth, it's not funny!" Kate yelled.

"I'm sorry, Katie," she pleaded. "My parents were in the Dharma Initiative for years. I never got involved and then when Jason came along...he said his parents were involved in the same thing and he promised me that I'd never have to be a part of it and I foolishly believed him...then I married him and realised how deep I was in it already."

She shook her head. "Why did you do this to us?" she asked in a quiet voice.

"I had no other choice, you have to believe me," she repeated. "It was either this or you and Tom died-"

"Oh, so it's better that one is dead and the other's life has been ruined by it, rather than both of us being dead?" Kate asked. Beth couldn't answer that one. Kate shook her head. "When I remember what happened to Tom, it makes me feel worse than dead."

"I'm sorry," Beth murmered again.

"So, the whole children act was bullshit?" Beth looked down again. "I knew it. I knew something wasn't right."

"What are you talking about?" Jack asked.

"Jason was known for his violence," she explained. "Katie had already experienced violence from Wayne, so she kept encouraging me to leave Jason. We had this whole dream about running away together, two girls on their own...when it came down to it, it was just unthinkable. Jason and Ben assigned me the mission the same time they did Sarah."

"What mission?"

"Recruit the donors they'd chosen," she said. "You and Katie."

"We were set up?" Kate asked.

"Sarah and I had nothing to do with the recruitment, we had no say in the matter," she said.

"Why us?" Kate asked.

"We honestly don't know."

"But the accident..." Jack remembered. "Sarah, you were paralysed...."

"The accident was real," she admited. "They had to get me into the hospital and under your long term care somehow. What better than a severe spinal injury?"

His eyes narrowed. "How dedicated of you."

"You have to understand that we had no choice in this matter."

"How did you do it?" Kate asked. "How did you manage to trick us into this?"

"I was your wife, Jack," Sarah reminded him. "For however short a time. It wasn't hard to get what they needed from you."

"How did you fool Kate?" he asked.

"It was much harded than getting what we needed from you, for sure," Beth told him. "I had to fake infertility, and carry on telling Katie how desperate Jason and I were for a child. Eventually, it worked, and shaved, offering to donate some of her eggs so that we could proceed with insemination. Katie and I went to the clinic together."

"Only you didn't get pregnant," Kate remembered.

"The first time we passed it off as a missed opportunity," she explained. "It happens like that sometimes. But we realised that I couldn't keep the excuses up forever, so we did the only thing possible."

"You had to die," Jack realised.

"Yeah, but I had to be alive as well. We staged the car crash, and they used a fake body."

"Did you know I'd be the one who had to identify that body?" Kate asked her.

Beth looked away again. "No, I didn;t."

Kate laughed hollowly. "I bet you don't even care...you don't care how hard it was to identify my best friend's body...how horrible it was to wake up in the middle of the night and remember all the blood..."

"Katie, I'm sorry-"

Kate's laugh stopped, and she cut Beth off with a horrifying shout. "I don't care if you're sorry!"

"Katie-"

"No one would do that to their best friend. No one."

"Katherine-" Sarah stepped in.

"No, she's right," Jack defended her. "How can you live with yourself for this?"

"Jack, working for these poeple has nothing to do with morals-"

"You're damn right it doesn't," he agreed. "I don't know what's worse; knowing what you did and how you did it, or knowing that our children have been forcably seperated from us for the first years of their lives!"

"The plan all along was to reunite you..." she started to defend, but Jack cut them off.

"How did you manage to get us on the same plane?"

"It was simple really," she told him. "Dharma knew where Katherine was the whole time she was on the run. They monitored her and sent in the cop when she'd have to get on the plane. And Jack, your father was part of Dharma," she said.

He rolled his eyes at that part. "Don't tell me he faked a death as well."

"He was supposed so, but things went wrong," she told him.

"Good," he nodded. "Because I think I'd have to kill himf or this if he walked through that door."

"Where are the kids now?" Kate asked.

"They're safe," Sarah told her.

"That's not what she asked you," Jack pointed out.

"Surely all that matters is that they're safe," Sarah told them.

"No, I want to know EXACTLY where they are!" Kate shouted again.

"Just tell her, Sarah," Beth said tiredly.

"They're with Alex," Sarah said. "She's preparing them."

"Preparing them for what?" Jack asked.

"Leaving."

Kate frowned. "Where are you taking them?"

"As long as everything is kept under control for the next forty-eight hours, the'll be heading back to your beach camp with the two of you."

They stopped, looking up at their captors. "Just like that?" Jack asked.

"Just like that," Beth nodded.

"Why?" Kate asked suspiciously.

"Because we started out by doing the wrong thing, and now we're doing the right thing to make up for it," Sarah explained.

Jack shook his head. "This doesn't make up for it. This doesn't even start to make up for it."

"Which is why you're providing passage home for you and your friends," Sarah replied.

"Rescue," Kate mumbled.

"In seven days time an empty cargo plane will pass over the island on it's way back to Figi. It will be enough to take your entire camp back along with it."

"We're going home?" Jack asked.

"There are conditions," Beth explained quickly.

"What conditions?" Kate asked.

"Silence," Sarah said simply. "You can't tell anyone about the Dharma Initiative or this island."

Jack laughed emptily. "I hate to compromise your apparently perfect plan, but I think my mother's going to wonder where her two grandchildren randomly appeared from," he reminded them.

"Then you come up with a cover story," Sarah instructed. "Anything to prevent them finding out. No one can know what happened to you on this island."

"Or what?" he challenged.

"Or everyone you love will be killed."


End file.
